The truth of the entrenched corruption flowing in and out of the leadership of the Vatican continues to evolve gradually exposing complexity of the layers of those involved. Pope Francis has been the catalyst that has evoked a substantial disruption of this long established flow of corruption for more than the past 30 years. He appears, over the past 5 years, not to be intimidated, or coerced by the routine threats from the outside and to acquiesce to their demands. Pope Francis has been a startling jolt to those involved in the corruption, forcing them to attempt to reroute their lines of corruption, though, often unsuccessfully that resulted in their increased efforts to publicly discredit him. In their efforts to fanatically re-established control they have exposed (1) their existence behind the scenes and (2) their means to achieve (3) their objective.

The Pope faces his adversaries

January 26, 2017

...In the United States, such talk which challenges the foundations of American free enterprise goes down badly. Francis has been described as a "Marxist" pope. His encyclical Laudato struck also against the discourse of climate change denial pushed by the petroleum giants.

Currently, the most severe attacks against the pope are coming from the United States. At the Order of Malta, the case of the Burmese condoms was put forward by the "Lepanto Institute for the restoration of all things in Christ".

The exposure of this entrenched corruption began to evolve from this one single question that kept annoying me ever since I came out, over 20 years ago, in March 1997 - how come the men at the Vatican were not aware of the science and scripture on the homosexuality? How could the science on homosexuality that is accepted by all the major medical and mental health associations and organizations around the world stating that homosexuality is a normal and positive variation of human sexuality and that attempts, depending on the type and the level of severity, to change or repress a child’s gay sexual orientation has caused lifelong harmful and dangerous effects to the safety and well-being of the child - how could this vital information not even be in the radar range of understanding of the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy???

It is interesting to note that at the time in March 1997 after “coming out” that the same paralyzing closeted/repressed homosexual fear of being exposed as a homosexual that the curia tried to induce in me (projective identification), as an attempt to coerce me into acquiescing to their demands that I agree to be sent away for months to be re-educated on the subject of gay sexual orientation - is the same paralyzing fear remains pervasive, 20 years later, throughout the members of the curia and hierarchy that has filtered down to the priests.

This, of course, does not include all the bishops and priests, even though, this number is extremely small. This is because very few are able to openly identify as being gay, or even privately among their friends or just to themselves that is admitting and accepting of the fact that they regularly experience being sexually attracted to, even feeling sexually arousal by members of the same-sex without feeling overwhelmed by shame and guilt. They are not controlled by their sexual feelings, they do not dominant their lives, the same as it is for a heterosexual person. It is only the repressed homosexuals, especially the severely repressed - who become forever obsessively absorbed in attempting to deny - to dissociated from their regularly experiencing being sexually attracted to, feeling physically sexually arousal to members of the same-sex. This repressed homosexual behavior leads to any number of mental disorders and to acting out sexually in ways that are risky and dangerous.

…ROBERT MICKENS, Vatican Correspondent, The Tablet: I came here when I was a seminarian in 1986. And I remember I had this very wide-eyed idea of the Vatican, of these holy cardinals and holy men. And I was shocked within a matter of weeks, months, at the careerism, at the sexual innuendo, the— just the whole kind of non-holy life I hadn't expected.

VATICAN GUIDE: [through interpreter] A large part of the hierarchy is homosexual. Certainly, at the top levels of the church, in the Curia, and many important people, such as bishops and archbishops, are gay.

NARRATOR: He's a Vatican guide who says he's had relationships with several priests.

VATICAN GUIDE: [through interpreter] Here in Rome, it's very easy to meet a gay priest, on a bus, in a church, and important churches like St. Peter's. It's even easier when you go to gay clubs and gay bars. You see them in the bars, and then at the altar the following Sunday…

The repressed homosexual behavior, which is predominant (as detailed in: Part 4D - NAZI ABUSE OF SCIENCE -> GENOCIDE “RACIAL CLEANSING” & WAR CHILDHOOD -> CURIA - GENOCIDE of HOMOSEXUALShttp://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.hk/2018/01/part-4d-homosexuality-if-it-is-not_9.html) among the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy clearly has played a significant part in enabling the entrenched corruption for the past three decades. The biggest fear of repressed (closeted) homosexuals is the fear of exposurethat is being exposed as being gay. It is difficult for us who have grown up gay the United States, well after the WWII to even imagine the degree of intensity of this fear, - to be exposed as being gay in Nazi Germany, because it meant being sent to prison and the possibility of unbelievable brutal torture. This would be the most inhuman form of suppression of a child's gay sexual orientation. Had we grown up gay in Nazi Germany during our early childhood years we would have experienced the inhuman severity of the Nazi social environment: - where the endless propaganda staged against homosexuals, like the Jewish people, was that they posed a dangerous threat to the survival of the German people. It was a time, where anyone could be accused of being homosexual by a neighbor, or enemy without evidence, or any innocent gesture of friendship observed in public - was enough to send someone to the concentration camp. The heinous intensity of this forced suppression of a child's gay sexual orientation, as adults, would have greatly increased, at the peril of our lives, our constant unconscious repression of even the slightest connection of being gay to break through the surface of our conscious minds. In a state of fright, it would have been unconsciously etched in our minds from early childhood years that to be exposed as a homosexuals meant to be fiercely despises by everyone and that at any time without warning, we would face an immediate and brutal death.

It is impossible to repress any type of sexual orientation, gay, straight or bisexual, because a person’s sexual orientation functions continuously 24/7 outside conscious awareness - as it is under the control of the autonomic nervous system. Even though every aspect of being gay is repressed out of a person’s conscious awareness - the continuous functioning acted out in ways that are disguised to the person, however, they are observable to others. The majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy comprise a homogeneous population of repressed homosexuals. Their acting out behaviors are observable in almost perfect unison - as a group of synchronized swimmers. Their obsessive antigay crusade to silence and remove any and all open discussions on the science on homosexuality - is an outward expression of their unconscious repression to keep anything homosexual out of their conscious awareness. The same is true about their adamant insistence “that men with ‘deeply rooted homosexual tendencies’ shouldn’t be admitted into Catholic seminaries and, therefore, shouldn’t become Catholic priests (https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2016/12/07/vatican-reiterates-homosexuals-shouldnt-priests/).” Because the term “deeply rooted homosexual tendencies” is undefined by any medical or mental health associations nor is defined in the scriptures - therefore it is a concoction formulated in the repressed homosexual’s minds. It is a protection of the laborious constant activity of repressed homosexuals. They are the ones who experience their unconscious inability to completely repressed their own “deeply rooted homosexual tendencies.” Over the past 30 years, they have recruited repressed homosexuals to filled the priesthood and becoming members of the curia and hierarchy. This is how the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy came to the homogeneous population of repressed homosexuals. The outside exploitation of repressed homosexuals prelates that fill the curia and the hierarchy by blackmail became as easy as “shooting fish in a barrel.” And it is these repressed homosexuals prelates who are have slow down Pope Francis efforts to reform the curia.

THE PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS IN NAZI GERMANY

…Unlike ethnicity, homosexuality is not a characteristic immediately obvious to an observer, and therefore the Gestapo and other Nazi agencies frequently relied upon denunciations received from informers who often possessed a personal grudge against the accused person;…Such summary justice was enabled by changes to Germany’s penal code in 1935 that broadened the scope of Paragraph 175 to facilitate the indictment of as many suspected homosexuals as possible. Previously, the courts had required a relatively high burden of proof: only observed anal intercourse between men was considered a violation of the statute. After the Nazi revision, however, “very minor sexual intimacies were landing men in concentration camps...In fact, in some cases it was, as a legal commentator of 1944 put it, ‘not necessary that a physical contact has taken place or is even just intended…

…It should be noted that Nazi authorities sometimes used the charge of homosexuality to discredit and undermine their political opponents. Charges of homosexuality among the SA (Storm trooper) leadership figured prominently among justifications for the bloody purge of SA chief Ernst Röhm in June 1934. Nazi leader Hermann Göring used trumped-up accusations of homosexual improprieties to unseat army supreme commander Von Fritsch, an opponent of Hitler's military policy, in early 1938. Finally, a 1935 propaganda campaign and two show trials in 1936 and 1937 alleging rampant homosexuality in the priesthood, attempted to undercut the power of the Roman Catholic Churchin Germany, an institution which many Nazi officials considered their most powerful potential enemy…Read more:https://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/homosexuals-victims-of-the-nazi-era/persecution-of-homosexuals

Nazis Alleging Rampant Homosexuality in the Priesthood,

attempted to undercut

the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany,

an institution which many Nazi officials consideredtheir

mostpowerful potential enemy

A child’s gay sexual orientation would have been severely suppressed growing up gay in the social environment forcibly induced by the highly publicized propaganda of the Nazi antigay prejudices to justify the removal (Catholic Clergy) and massacre (Storm trooper, Ernst Röhm) of the opposition that threatened the rise of nazism.The reaction of a gay child to this type of extremely forced suppression would be to fiercely repress - dissociate from the child’s internalization of these societal antigay prejudices of Nazi Germany including the Nazi twisted pseudo-science to claimed scientific legitimacy for their policy of racial purity to become the Aryan master race. It would be the internalization of this twisted understanding that homosexuals like the Jewish people were - not really human - they were subhumans on the level of a disease-carrying rats. The implication that follows from this arbitrary classification is that homosexuals are “Less Than Human (https://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-less-than-human)” that it is wrong to kill a human being, but it is not wrong to kill a rat. Aspects of this internalization of the Nazi treatment and conception of homosexual would be reenacted throughout the child’s adulthood years. Any threat of exposure to this gay child’s repression of his sexual orientation, as an adult would be a traumatic flashback - to his early childhood years experience of the Nazis understanding and public treatment of homosexuals. I wrote a post about this type of traumatic flashback titled - AUSCHWITZ - CHRISTMAS 2008 -- A flashback far more severe than in - BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN – December 26, 2008 - by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz - and gave a more detail explanation on Part 4D: Photos

Part 4D - NAZI ABUSE OF SCIENCE -> GENOCIDE “RACIAL CLEANSING” & WAR CHILDHOOD -> CURIA - GENOCIDE of HOMOSEXUALS - - Part 4D - Homosexuality - “If it is NOT a choice, if it is NOT a disease, in the perspective of faith it can only be a GIFT” - Bishop Cruz, Brazil - ’seeks to END ‘PREJUDICES that KILL’

Ennis tells Jack about something he saw as a boy. "There were two old guys shacked up together. They were the joke of the town, even though they were pretty tough old birds." One day they were found beaten to death. Ennis says: "My dad, he made sure me and my brother saw it. For all I know, he did it."

This childhood memory is always there, the ghost in the room, in Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain." When he was taught by his father to hate homosexuals, Ennis was taught to hate his own feelings. Years after he first makes love with Jack on a Wyoming mountainside, after his marriage has failed, after his world has compressed to a mobile home, the laundromat, the TV, he still feels the same pain: "Why don't you let me be? It's because of you, Jack, that I'm like this -- nothing, and nobody.”… Read more:https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/brokeback-mountain-2005

As stated above, it it easier to understand the degree that the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy are mentallydissociatedfrom the reality that they are gay. Many can barely admit to themselves that they are gay - even if they are acting out gay sexually or are leading a fierce obsessive antigay crusade. This has been proven numerous of times by the fierce antigay politicians, and minsters, who are exposed being in gay sexual relationships for a number of years. Given the powerful positions that these repressed homosexuals hold - makes them highly susceptible - as prime targets to be exploited by blackmail threats. It is been documented numerous times and is considered common knowledge among many that there is a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, who have and are being blackmailed by outsiders. This was especially noted at the time of resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, February 2013. It must be noted here that all the wasted time spent these past several decades - is due to the obsessive antigay crusade led by the repressed homosexuals in the curia. Their obsessive concerns about the activities of gay people, is a fascination that they shared with those who on the outside - who spend a great deal of money investigating these petrified Vatican repressed homosexual prelates, looking for slightest bit of gay sexual indiscretion to hold over them as blackmail bate to secure their everlasting obedience to their corrupt requests. All the tremendous worry and anxiety spent on this nonsense gay sexual indiscretions - would be dissolved in the matter of minutes - if they made public the decades of the science on homosexuality, available to everyone would immediate end the curia's being blackmailed. It appears to be that these repressed prelates are locked into their own fears and ignorance and there inability to seek out the necessary means to obtained the truth about their gay sexual orientation. No, this is not an easy thing to do - but it will be the most rewarding thing that they can do on this earth. They were handed picked because their repressed homosexual closeted behavior. These prelates do not serve the Catholic Church they serve the people behind the globalization. They are only valuable because they are locked into their early childhood fears - fears about being gay.

The absence of their willingness to study the research and to openly discuss the science on homosexuality - has only served to have paralyzed the sober, spiritual and professional workings of the curia of the Vatican in meeting the needs of millions of lives of people lives, especially children, such as helping to combat threats to our planet i.e. climate change. These repressed prelates are hanging on to their early childhood traumatic memories of being abandoned because they only wanted to love and to be loved - in the only way they knew how as a child of 4 or 5 years of age, as they were growing up gay, which they had no understanding of what "gay" meant. They were innocent childhood victims of this unidentified form of serve child abuse - forcing a gay child to stop loving anyone - in the only way they know innately how to do that comes naturally to him.These past 30 years had they been able to admitted and accepting of the fact that they are gay - these years would have included the endlessly fostering ongoing dialogue to begin developing better ways of living, and proving working conditions for all, meeting the medical and mental health care needs for everyone, providing money to invaluable research for the vital needs of all human beings - not just for advancement corporations who value profits more than the lives of people. As members of the Roman Catholic curia and hierarchy - they could have been leading the way, as Pope Francis has been doing ever since his election to the papacy - setting a vivid human example of how we can meet the global need of improving the ways we care for all peoples. Imagine where the world would be today - if we started the work of Pope Francis back in the 1980s. We would likely have sustained and developed tons of new ways of fully functioning on this planet - living productive lives looking and working towards the actualization of many future possibilities that would have been beneficial to all. Instead, on this planet, in the last 30 years, we appear to have lost our guiding light, as a country, however, not as individuals. As a country, we have been sabotaging our every possibility to advance the safety and well being of everyone on this earth. We seem more than ever to have become disconnected from one another - or at least a disconnected from the 1% of the world population who hold all the world's wealth from the 99%. In many ways, though many are invisible it seems like we are repeating -THE GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO KATRINA: A DISASTER WITHIN A DISASTER 9/18/05. It was not only the disaster of Hurricane Katrina that "had ripped through New Orleans" it was the failure of the US government to care promptly for the victims suffering from the atrocities in the aftermath of Katrina that many victims were left dying and this extended failure, the second disaster, of Katrina that was in human control to be prevent - this overwhelming inhumanity of not caring for those most in need was made visible, it was endlessly being televised on all the National and International News Networks. Every news report, every denial - all the TV news coverage - that followed revealed all the human kinks and human errors, caused by the decades of government cut backs of funding money for the reenforcement the New Orleans levees that was responsible for 80% of the flooding - it can be summed up that it was a disaster in a disaster waiting to happen. It was the gradual decline of the value of human life as not being profitable enough to protect, to safeguard that caused the devastation of Katrina of 2005. It is this kind devaluing of certain groups of people who are considered to be less than human and therefore are "excluded from the system of moral rights and obligations that bind humankind together (https://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-less-than-human)" that is an invisible form of violence noted as the Structural Violence- where funding for the needs of the poor and disadvantage is not an issue of concern among government law makers. These are the holocaust victims of today caused by structural violence the invisible form of violence that though it is slower - it is just as deadly as direct violence.

...Direct violence is horrific, but its brutality usually gets our attention: we notice it, and often respond to it. Structural violence, however, is almost always invisible, embedded in ubiquitous social structures, normalized by stable institutions and regular experience. Structural violence occurs whenever people are disadvantaged by political, legal, economic, or cultural traditions. Because they are longstanding, structural inequities usually seem ordinary—the way things are and always have been. Butstructural violence produces suffering and death as often as direct violence does, though the damage isslower, moresubtle, more common, and more difficult to repair. The chapters in this section teach us about some important but invisible forms of structural violence, and alert us to the powerful cultural mechanisms that create and maintain them over generations.

...Recognizing the operation of structural violence forces us to ask questions about how and why we tolerate it, questions that often have painful answers. The first chapter in this section, “Social Injustice,” by Susan Opotow, argues that our normal perceptual/cognitive processes lead us to care about people inside our scope of justice, but rarely care about those people outside. Injustice that would be instantaneously confronted if it occurred to someone we love or know is barely noticed if it occurs to strangers or those who are invisible or irrelevant to us. We do not seem to be able to open our minds and our hearts to everyone; moral exclusion is a product of our normal cognitive processes. But Opotow argues convincingly that we can reduce its nefarious effects by becoming aware of our distorted perceptions. Inclusionary thinking can be fostered by relationships, communication, and appreciation of diversity.

...One outcome of exclusionary thinking is the belief that victims of violence must in some way deserve their plight. But certainly it is easy to see that young children do not deserve to be victims…

Linda Wertheimer of NPR - wrote an essay after she spent days witnessing and reporting on the horrendous tragedies of Hurricane Katrina 2005. She explains that it is a question of leadership that led to needless deaths and suffering of our fellow Americans that is the problem we are facing today. The systemic problem of leadership of the US government in Washington DC appeared to be the overall complete lack of empathy, that is the ability to experience the pain and suffering of another human being. It is this extreme lack of empathy that prevented the electing and the appointing qualified people with the proper credentials and experience: (1) to allocate the necessary and timely funding for the re-enforcement of the New Orleans levees that could have minimized the flooding by 80% and (2) to head and staff - Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA, in order to protect and to meet the needs of people suffering from the tragedies of Hurricane Katrina. However, from the top down: beginning with the leadership, to the orchestration of the administration - the appointments made to the cabinet followed by the chosen staff personnel of each cabinet member and the support of the Republican party members of both houses in Congress - appeared to be disconnected from meeting the needs of people, the inability to empathize with the overall magnitude of what people were suffering from, instead, continued to serve the needs of the 1% of the nation's population. It is most surprising that these same similarities noted by Linda Wertheimer in 2005 related to man made problems of Katrina are the same similarities that are found among the Repressed Homosexual Prelates among the members of the curia in the Vatican. Katrine exposed the invisible form of structural violence that began decades before Katrina struck the shores of the US in 2005. One can only imagine the extreme immensity of structural violence that will follow at the end of the Trump administration.

“If you have a serious problem, the way to deal with it is to legislate that it doesn’t exist. Problem solved.”

Requiem for the American Dream - Noam Chomsky

interviewed by Amy Goodman

DECEMBER 25, 2017

…in North Carolina, a couple of years ago, where the Legislature, mostly thanks to gerrymandering, is in the hands of the Republicans, there was a study.They called for a study on the effect of sea level rise—on what sea level rise might be on the North Carolina coast. And there was a serious scientific study, which predicted, in not—I forget how many years—not a long time, about roughly a meter rise in sea level, which could be devastating to eastern North Carolina. And the Legislature did react, namely, by passing legislation to ban any actions or even discussion that might have to do with climate change. Actually, the best comment of this—I wish I could quote it verbatim—was by Stephen Colbert, who said, “If you have a serious problem, the way to deal with it is to legislate that it doesn’t exist. Problem solved.” You know, this is going on all over the country.

And it’s not just—it’s not simply climate change. That’s bad enough. But there’s another huge specter that we’re kind of trying to survive under, and that’s nuclear war. That’s a whole other story…

IN HUMAN HISTORY THAT IS DEDICATED WITH SUCH COMMITMENT TO THE DESTRUCTION OF ORGANIZED HUMAN LIFE ON EARTH?

NOT THAT I AM AWARE OF…

IS THE REPUBLICAN ORGANIZATION, I HESITATE TO CALL IT A PARTY, COMMITTED TO THAT? OVERWHELMINGLY, THERE ISN'T EVEN ANY QUESTION ABOUT IT.

TAKE A LOOK AT THE LAST PRIMARY CAMPAIGN

PLENTY OF PUBLICITY BUT VERY LITTLE COMMENT ON THE MOST SIGNIFICANT FACT. EVERY SINGLE CANDIDATE EITHER DENIEDTHAT WHAT IS HAPPENING IS HAPPENING, A SERIOUS MOVE TOWARD ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE…

I AGREE THAT IS A VERY OUTRAGEOUS STATEMENT, SO I THEREFORE SIMPLY SUGGEST THAT YOU TAKE A LOOK AT THE FACTS AND SEE IF IT HAS ANY MERIT OR IF IT SHOULD IT BE BITTERLY CONDEMNED…MY VIEW OF THE FACTS ARE PRETTY CLEAR.

William Lutz, professor of English at Rutgers University, discusses his most recent book Double Speak: The Use of Language to Deceive You. A unique analysis of American English, examples of double-speak are "human kinetics" in place of "physical education," and "pavement deficiencies" instead of "potholes." Double-speak is consciously used to manipulate. Lutz points out that his mission is not to eradicate double-speak, but to eliminate double-speak from the discourse of important issues where it is most dangerous. He states that double-speak is most prevalent in government, followed closely by the advertising industry.

Double-speak is language designed to evade responsibility, make the unpleasant appear pleasant, the unattractive appear attractive. Basically, it's language that pretends to communicate, but really doesn't. It is language designed to mislead, while pretending not to.

Double-speak is not a slip of the tongue or a mistaken use of language, it's exactly the opposite. It is language used by people who are very intelligent and very sophisticated in the use of language, and know that you can do an awful lot with language.

George Carlin: When people can't handle any more combat - in the First World War, that was called shell shock, which is very simple, honest and direct language. Shell shock, it describes exactly what it is. It almost sounds like guns. In the Second World War, a generation later, they decided to call that battle fatigue. It's twice as long now, four syllables, takes longer to say, doesn't seem to hurt. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock - shell shock, battle fatigue.

Then we had Korea in 1950. They called the same thing operational exhaustion. Now that humanity is completely missing from it and it sounds like something that might happen to your jeep. And in Vietnam, of course, the same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. And my point is, if we had still been calling it shell shock, maybe Vietnam veterans might have gotten some attention at the time.

Intentionally deceiving language. Not an outright lie or a tactful euphemism, but systematic use of ambiguous,evasive words and sentence structures to say one thing but mean something else. Commonly associated with bureaucracy…also as a calculated attempt to (1) avoid or shift responsibility, (2) distort reality by making the bad, negative, or unpleasant look good, positive, or pleasant, and vice versa, and (3) confuse by using unfamiliar or concocted jargon… Also called doubletalk or doublethink.

The following are a small number of examples of the misuse of terms - to justify a countless number of inappropriate actions taken during the Bush Administration - One only dreads to review the aftermath of the Trump Administration.

DOUBLESPEAK AND THE WAR ON TERROR

November 26, 2006

A briefing paper entitled Doublespeak and the War on Terrorism by Timothy Lynch of the Cato Institute seems to be getting belated attention. It appeared in September, but this AP report by Calvin Woodward came out today. The briefing paper addresses the attempt of the Bush Administration to make more palatable its violations of civil liberties by using doublespeak, e.g. dubbing "warrants" "national security letters" in the hope that the courts will be fooled into thinking that judicial oversight is not required, or describing the suicide attempts of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay (referred to by the Bush Administration as "detainees", as if they were witnesses to a traffic accident asked by the police to remain until they could be interviewed) as "self-injurious behavior incidents”…

When George W. Bush and members of his administration talk about environmental policy, the phrase "sound science" rarely goes unuttered. On issues ranging from climate change to the storage of nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, our president has assured us that he's backing up his decisions with careful attention to the best available research.

It's not just Bush: Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives, led by Reps. Chris Cannon of Utah and Jim Gibbons of Nevada, have announced the formation of a "Sound Science Caucus" to ramp up the role of "empirical" and "peer reviewed" data in laws such as the Endangered Species Act. And last August the Office of Management and Budget unveiled a proposal to amplify the role of "peer review" in the evaluation of scientific research conducted by federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

It all sounds noble enough, but the phrases "sound science" and "peer review" don't necessarily mean what you might think. Instead, they're part of a lexicon used to put a pro-science veneer on policies that most of the scientific community itself tends to be up in arms about. In this Orwellian vocabulary, "peer review" isn't simply an evaluation by learned colleagues. Instead, it appears to mean an industry-friendly plan to require such exhaustive analysis that federal agencies could have a hard time taking prompt action to protect public health and the environment. And "sound science" can mean, well, not-so-sound science.

…That use of the term goes back to a campaign waged by the tobacco industryto undermine the indisputable connection between smoking and disease…Industry documents released as a result of tobacco litigation show that in 1993 Philip Morris and its public relations firm, APCO Associates, created a nonprofit front group called The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) to fight against the regulation of cigarettes…

Since then, other industry groups have invoked "sound science" to easegovernment restrictions…In April 2001, Vice President Cheney's energy task force urged the Interior Department to open up more of Alaska for oil and gas drilling based on "sound science and the best available technology.”…

…Start early in the administration, with the 2001 release of the third assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Marshaling the work of thousands of scientists worldwide, the U.N. body found that climate change was indeed happening, thanks to our relentless pumping of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Bush's reaction: Put the policy before the science. Calling our understanding of the global climate "incomplete," he pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol. Only then did the administration ask the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to review, in the space of a month, the IPCC's report, which had been years in the making. Sure enough, the NAS confirmed the IPCC's findings -- embarrassing Bush and exposing the flaws in his approach to science policymaking…

Veteran journalists Helen Thomas and Daniel Schorr join Associated Press reporter Scott Lindlaw in a lively discussion on how covering the White House has changed over the years in this forum sponsored by the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. Learn from the insiders how the beat has changed with president Bush in office. (#8194)

Four years ago on May 1, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln and delivered a speech in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner. Despite profound questions and the increasing violence in Baghdad, many in the press confirmed the White House's claim that the war was won. How did they get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 continue to go largely unreported?

Bill Moyers Journal premieres at a special time, with "Buying the War," a 90-minute documentary that explores the role of the press in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

We know now that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. A new book alleges that it was possible to know that even before the U.S. invaded. In fact, journalist Ron Suskind suggests that President Bush sent the nation to war knowing there were no weapons to find…

LYDEN: By any count - and there have been many - the toll has been devastating. In blood, about 4,400 U.S. troops and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead. And in treasure, combined costs of the war come to an astounding $2 trillion. A new report out of Brown University finds that includes future commitments like veteran care. Our cover story today: the Iraq War, where we stand 10 years later.

Even though the war officially ended in December of 2011, there are those who still live with its legacy and always will. Shannon Meehan is a veteran living in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and three young sons. Back in 2007, Meehan was 24 years old and a tank platoon leader in the city of Baqubah. He was on a control mission traveling house to house making sure they were clear.

SHANNON MEEHAN: My soldiers came upon one house in particular that basically appeared to be booby-trapped to us. And I called in a mortar strike in what I thought was an effort to protect the lives of my soldiers. And mortar rounds were fired and etched through the sky, making their way to this house. And as they came in, they destroyed the target, they destroyed the house. And at first, I remember feeling this sense of relief.

However, that feeling quickly changed when we received word that there was an innocent family inside that house. There was a mother and father, and their children huddled inside that house that I had just destroyed. And trying to reconcile what I had just done destroying this family with what our mission was, you know, they're in direct contrast with each other, and I was just overwhelmed with a sense of disbelief and guilt immediately.

LYDEN: I'm wondering how it is that you live or cope with the image of what happened to the family.

MEEHAN: Honestly, it's terribly difficult. It's something that I struggle with almost every day. And I remember having our first child. And certainly, every parent or to-be parent feels, you know, a great deal of weight upon them, but I just felt like it was different. I was bringing into this world this beautiful gift that I had robbed another father of, this beautiful gift that I, myself, had destroyed. So there is this heaviness surrounding that.

LYDEN: Also, in 2007, Shannon Meehan stepped on a tripwire and was thrown skyward in an IED blast. He suffered from a ruptured eardrum, shrapnel wounds and traumatic brain injury. He was awarded the Purple Heart for his wounds but says he struggled to take pride in the medal.

MEEHAN: I just can't help but think of that family. You know, their deaths will go unhonored, and they'll soon be forgotten. And there's nothing that's going to change that, yet I am sitting here with a medal for my injuries, which are far less than anything of what that family had felt.

LYDEN: Meehan says he's fearful about how this war will be remembered.

MEEHAN: That it'll be remembered as the mistake war, the war that we shouldn't have been in, or the illegal war. And to hear that our efforts and the deaths of our friends will go down as nothing more than a mistake is damning…

…The 81-year-old retired Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice gave a big pitch for her new passion, iCivics, last night at the 2011 Purpose Prize awards held at Cavallo Point in Sausalito, CA.

She's rebooting civic education.

When she retired in 2005 she was deeply concerned that students were not getting the schooling they need to truly participate as citizens in our country…

Saucy, sparkly and funny, she bemoaned the state of public school education in America, where students no longer routinely study civics and know precious little about our judicial system and those other branches of the government.

Fewer than half of Americans can list all three branches of government, yet three in four can name all of the Three Stooges, she quipped. They don’t know who John Roberts is, but they can name at least one judge on American Idol, she shot out. We all laughed.

After more than 24 years in the U.S. Supreme Court, former Justice O’Connor is atop her new bench speaking out about ways to make civics and government more appealing to school kids than it was for her growing up in El Paso, Texas.

O’Connor argued that young people need to be better informed about the workings of their own government. She says she and her colleagues were tired of hearing people criticize the nation’s judges and the judicial system.

So O’Connor got down to business and helped develop iCivics.org, a non-profit web-based project combining the snap and crackle of fun interactive computer games with straight-forward information about the history of U.S. government and its laws…

Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court after 191 years, is crusading to reverse what she says is an alarming decline in America's knowledge of democracy and announced an initiative Wednesday to educate children across the country.

Asserting that democracy is not inherited at birth but rather learned in school, O'Connor founded the educational nonprofit group iCivics in 2009 to secure America's governance and prepare the next generation of citizens and leaders…

The amount of time public-school kids spend learning about government and civics is shrinking.

SEP 23, 2013

The most obvious and well-reported casualties of the last decade in program-slashing educational policy include traditional elective courses like art, music, and physical education. But these are not the only subjects being squeezed out or eliminated entirely from many public K-12 curriculums.

Social studies--a category that includes courses in history, geography, and civics--has also found itself on the chopping block…

…Despite this extra focus on math and science, social studies managed to make it through the end of the Cold War relatively unscathed (in fact, the number of classroom hours dedicated to teaching social studies in grades 1-4 peaked in the 1993-1994 school year at 3 hours a week). But drastic change came a decade later with the passage of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation.

No Child Left Behind was signed into law in an attempt to address the growing achievement gap between affluent and low-income students. It was a controversial piece of legislation from the start, mainly because of its “one size fits all’” approach: It uses annual standardized tests to determine how well students are performing in reading and math and then uses those scores to determine the amounts of federal funding schools receive.

Besides the obvious criticism that low-performing schools--arguably the ones that need the most increase in funding--are disproportionally punished for their low scores, critics also believe that No Child Left Behind has narrowed the curriculum…

…This devaluation of social studies as a core subject in the K-12 curriculum has troubling economic, political, and social implications. For one, social studies at all grade levelsencourages students to develop skills in critical thinking--one of the top traits employers look for in a candidate. It also requires students become strongwritten and oral communicators who know how to structure and articulate their opinions…Without the skills gained from social studies, students are less attractive to employers.

Perhaps even more troubling, however, is that reducing students’ exposure to a solid curriculum in social studies leads to what a growing number of experts are calling a “civic achievement gap”. Closely related to the general achievement gap between affluent, mostly white studentsand low-income minority students, the civic achievement gap has made it increasingly difficult for those who grow up in low-income households to participate in civic affairs…

Oil services company Halliburton has come under intense scrutiny over its multi-billion-dollar contracts with the U.S. military in Iraq. Congressional critics want to know if the company is engaging in gold-plating contracts — inflating costs and pocketing the difference. Other critics charge that Halliburton has seemingly become another branch of the U.S. military, while the company's former chief executive officer, Dick Cheney, is now the vice president.

In the first of a three-part series looking at the complex relationship between the defense contractor and the federal government, NPR's John Burnett examines the scope of contracts in Iraq held by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, better known as KBR…

David Corn over at Mother Jones unearths a 2009 video of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in which Paul suggests that former vice president Dick Cheney wanted to invade Iraq in order to benefit his former employer, Halliburton.

In the video, shot at Western Kentucky University, Paul argues that Cheney thought the invasion was a bad idea in the first Bush administration but changed his tune after working for Halliburton.

"He's being interviewed (in 1995), I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and and he says it would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it would be civil war, we'd have no exit strategy. He goes on and on for five minutes — Dick Cheney saying it would be a bad idea," Paul said. "And that's why the first Bush didn’t go into Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars — their CEO. Next thing you know, he's back in government, it's a good idea to go into Iraq."

Paul also said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were used as a pretext for the invasion.

"It became an excuse," Paul said. "9/11 became an excuse for a war they already wanted in Iraq.”…

WATCH: Rand Paul Says Dick Cheney Pushed for the Iraq War So Halliburton Would Profit

APR. 7, 2014

As the ex-veep blasts Paul for being an isolationist, old video shows the Kentucky senator charging that Cheney used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq and benefit his former company.

Last week, continuing the sometimes catty intraparty feud between Republican hawks and GOPers skeptical of foreign intervention, former Vice President Dick Cheney took a shot at Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). But Paul is not likely to be fazed by criticism from Cheney, for several years ago the Kentucky senator was pushing the conspiratorial notion that the former VP exploited the horrific 9/11 attacks to lead the nation into war in Iraq in order to benefit Halliburton, the enormous military contractor where Cheney had once been CEO…

(hegemony - leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others)

Dick Cheney’s Awfulness Is Here to Stay

07.15.14

…I contend that there’s nothing mysterious about him at all. Incredible as it may seem, he does still think he was right. The tactical mistakes, if there were any, were mere details. But the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do, he still undoubtedly believes. And it’s important that we understand the real reason he thinks it was the right thing to do, because Iraq failure or no Iraq failure, Rand Paul or no Rand Paul, Cheney’s view will always be dominant in the Republican Party’s higher echelons.

There were always a lot of misperceptions about the Iraq war, in the mainstream media and among liberal opponents of it. Oversimplifying a bit, the media bought that it was about 9/11; that we had to strike back. It was also, in this narrative, about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and his even more alleged nuclear capabilities. These were the reasons the Bush administration put forward to scare the public, and the media, to their everlasting dishonor, bought those arguments.

On the broad left, people tended toward the fundamental explanations of political economy: that it was about oil, or Halliburton, or, in Michael Moore’s interpretation, the Carlyle Group. Oil was a factor, a side benefit. But it wasn’t about oil, and it certainly wasn’t about Halliburton or Carlyle.

It was about establishingglobal American hegemony. To get this fully you have to go back to 1992, when Cheney was the secretary of defense. Cheney’s world view was wholly formed by the Cold War. The bipolar world of U.S. v. USSR, good v. evil, was all he’d known. It was the rubric under which all thought was organized. Then, suddenly, the USSR was gone! Now what?

Cheney’s Pentagon—including figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and even Colin Powell, who may be a good guy now but was fully implicated in all this at the time—set to pondering that question, and by the spring of 1992, it came up with an answer: the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), a white paper outlining future U.S. defense policy. Now that we were the only superpower in the world, it said, our main job was to make damn sure things stayed that way…

Abstract: Research in the discipline of international relations finds that the democratic great powers are less likely to pursue revisionist policies. This investigation challenges this argument by showing that the United States’s decision to oust Saddam Hussein’s regime in March 2003 were consistent with a modified version of John Mearsheimer’s theory of offensive realism, which finds that great powers’ motivation is global hegemony. This investigation is divided into three sections. Section one considers the value of Mearsheimer’s theory and reworks it by adding domestic variables to explain why states abandon defensive strategies for offensive ones. The second section shows how pre-9/11 American foreign policy strategy was, for the most part, status quo oriented, while section three shows why and how the Bush administration introduced a revisionist foreign policy strategy after the 9/11 attacks. This investigation concludes by showing how the 2003 Iraq war is the first step in the United States’ quest for global hegemony.

Post-9/11 American foreign policy has abandoned its tradition of moderation and self-restraint; defensive strategies designed to preserve the status quo have been replaced with a more aggressive strategy. The United States (US), under President George W. Bush’s guidance, has used its position of power to re-make the world according to its interests and ideals. In doing so, it has disregarded international law, downgraded the value of multilateral mechanisms, attempted to co-opt the United Nations (UN), and ignored its allies’ interests. The Bush administration’s 2002 National Security Strategy presented the rationale for this departure in American foreign policy and the US-led coalition’s ousting of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power indicated the influence of these ideas. While many Americans are displeased with the Bush administration’s handling of post-war Iraq, the recent release of the 2006 National Security Strategy re- affirms its commitments to the most controversial aspects of the 2002 policy document, including the US’s right to engage in pre-emptive strikes…

About the author:

Carlos L. Yordán earned his Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is currently an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Drew University in Madison, NJ, USA.

Current criticism over Halliburton's lucrative Iraq contracts has some historians drawing parallels to a similar controversy involving the company during Lyndon B. Johnson's administration.

Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its work for the U.S. government in Vietnam — allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts from the White House and war profiteering. Back then, the company's close ties to President Johnson became a liability. Today — as NPR's John Burnett reports in the last of a three-part series — Halliburton seems to be distancing itself from its former chief executive officer, Vice President Dick Cheney.

The story of Halliburton's ties to the White House dates back to the 1940s, when a Texas firm called Brown & Root constructed a massive dam project near Austin. The company's founders, Herman and George Brown, won the contract to build Mansfield Dam thanks to the efforts of Johnson, who was then a Texas congressman.

After Johnson took over the Oval Office, Brown & Root won contracts for huge construction projects for the federal government. By the mid-1960s, newspaper columnists and the Republican minority in Congress began to suggest that the company's good luck was tied to its sizable contributions to Johnson's political campaign…

As the Middle East has become the centerpiece of its drive for global hegemony, America’s de-stabilizing impact on the region has deepened; equally, the reaction from the Middle East to US policy carries important consequences for US hegemony globally. The Iraq war is the pivotal event around which these developments centre.

Explaining the US Invasion of Iraq

The invasion of Iraq can only be properly understood by bringing together three levels of analysis: 1) US global grand strategy 2) the US strategic position in the Middle East; and 3) the interests of Bush's ruling coalition. Understanding the Iraq war, in turn, exposes the inner mainsprings of US Middle East policy and the region's pivotal role in overall US global strategy.

US Global Grand Strategy

and the Middle East

The starting point for understanding the invasion of Iraq is the grand strategy of the US under Bush to undertake a coercive assertion of global hegemony. The Project for a New American Century frankly acknowledges this reach for hegemony. The Bush doctrine and the 2002 National Security Strategy, formulated in response to the 9/11 attacks, make explicit the coercive turn: the call for "full spectrum dominance;" the strategy of dealing with resistance to the US not simply through traditional containment, but via "preventive wars;" the resort to unilaterialism, with ad-hoc "coalitions of the willing;" the view that states not with the US in the war on terrorism are against it; and the claim that only the US liberal model is legitimate, with sovereignty exempting no nation from the demand that it conform. This, of course, is all quite a change from traditional US foreign policy which was based on the containment of threats and which viewed hegemony as being rooted in consent derived from multilateral consultation (deviation), hence necessarily limited by international law and institutions; diplomacy, too, was prioritized over military force. By contrast, the architects of the Bush administration strategy had long advocated a strategy of hegemony based on the use of American's exceptional military capabilities…

The Mainsprings of War

The 9/11 terrorist attack on the US is central to understanding the war on Iraq even though Iraq was in no way involved in it. This attack exposed a terrible threat to the US, originating in the Middle East and Muslim world that had to be countered; at the same time, hard-liners in the Bush administration who had advocated an attack on Iraq even before 9/11 saw it as an opportunity to mobilize support for a war they thought would be decisive in transforming the Middle East to suit US interests.

The first hurdle the Bush administration had to clear was to legitimize war on a state that did not threaten the US. The issue of WMDs was hit upon as a way to turn the 'war on terrorism' against Iraq; to do so, Bush had to claim that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaida and was actively developing weapons of mass destruction which he might turn over to terrorists or use on their behalf, and hence that Iraq represented an imminent threat to the US. These claims have not only been discredited but, additionally, there is strong evidence that the war party in Washington deliberated exaggerated unreliable claims and knew Iraq was no threat to the US. At any rate, the threat was never that WMDs would be used against the USA but that they could constrain US freedom of action in the Middle East or threaten Israel…

The majority of the members of the curia and the hierarchy are a vivid example of same kind of complete disrespect and concern for human beings by their continued refusal to admit and to openly discuss the existence of the extensive wealth of research compiled in the USA and internationally over the past 6 decades on the science on homosexuality. All this scientific research is reaffirming the ground breaking research completed in 1957 of Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s - proving that homosexuality is not a mental illness or mental disorder. Her research has been accepted for decades by all the major medical and mental health associations and organizations around the world stating the homosexuality is a normal and positive variation of human sexuality and that attempts to change or repress a child’s gay sexual orientation has been to have caused dangerous effects on the safety and well-being of the child. It is mind staggering that this research is not even in the radar range of understanding by the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy??? Their absolute refusal to acknowledge this science so vital to the safety and well-being of children growing up gay globally gives a visual license and approval to Republican administrations and the like - to arbitrary ignore the science on “Climate Change” regardless of the ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHIC effect it causes to the earth and to the millions of lives it is harming. Their refusal to acknowledge the science on homosexuality gives the example and license that it is acceptable to exclude any number of groups of people - as being less than human that opens to the doors to genocidal violence implicitly condoned by the majority of the members of the curia and the hierarchy. Without any forthcoming substantiating evidence - the wealth of the scientific research on homosexuality that has accumulated and is accepted over the past six decades - is ironically dismissed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church - reference to homosexuality in 6 words - “Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained(http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm).” Do we know the genesis of cancer? Even though we not know the genesis of cancer - millions of people's lives who have been diagnosed as having cancer have been saved by what we do know through the scientific research of cancer!!!

The nuclear immorality that we are experiencing in the world today that threatens our very existence on this earth - all stems from the devaluing and separating science from the ongoing dialogue with religion is demonstrated by the majority of the members of the curia and the hierarchy, who arrogantly are leading the way by their disregard of the science on homosexuality. However, as always seems to be the case, Thank God, is that this statement is not true of all members of the hierarchy and especially not Pope Francis. Pope Francis, from the very beginning of his papacy, he was the first ever, in only 5 short words “Who am I to judge?” to globally acknowledged the respect and dignity of gay people. In the US - it was of the magnitude of the complete opposite initial emotional affect of the disorienting and paralyzing explosion of fright - hearing the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt over the radio airwaves, the first public figure in the US, even before her husband, announcing to the nation, on the evening of December 7, 1941 of the surprised attack “that Japan's airships were bombing our citizens in Hawaii and the Philippines (http://time.com/4584910/eleanor-roosevelt-pearl-harbor/)” receded into overwhelming waves of terror.

In contrast, even though Pope Francis's words were no more than plain human respect for another human they were ever more surprising, because they were never believed possible by people around the world.“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/world/europe/pope-francis-gay-priests.html)?”Because Pope Francis's words were spoken off-the-cuff, they were without any pretense and were perceived to be of the most sincerest kindness and respect. The emotional and rational effect of his words were - in ways, similar to lightning speed of trauma - that without any warning - immediately past by the conscious mind and struck deep into the hearts and minds - releasing the mind from the emotional paralyzing fears of the irrational and unsubstantiated internalized societal antigay prejudices. It then receded into healing waves of rational calmness - toning down the emotional hysteria of the unwarranted feelings of shame and guilt making room for the person to begin to feel valued and worthy of being loved. In some, restoring new hope and energy and the confidence to more forward in life. For others, feeling deeply renewed, because that tremendous amount of energy that was spent repressing the unsubstantiated antigay social and religious norms that had been internalized and had become "a never-ending self-torturous life style ( Henry Krystal, M.D.)" has ended. Feeling the release of all that energy the individual begins living, in many ways for the every first time and can identify and empathized with the pain in others and begin caring for others. The sincerity of Pope Francis's courageous actualization of expressing the core meaning of the one commandment that Christ gave to us all that we are to love one another as Christ has loved us - has left a lasting impression of Christ’s love in the hearts and minds of people, globally. The long history of Pope Francis walking through the slums of Buenos Aires, reaching out and meeting with people that he has continued globally as the pope is evident, because it is the background to his statement and reason that his words resonates so deeply in people's hearts and minds. It is a situation that cannot be faked, because we are changed forever by every person we meet on a personal level. This awareness of the human spirit is what is completely missing among the people in the US Congress and the White House who claim to be Republicans. It is why their spoken words are meaningless encased in the deceptive language of double-speak and is void of any sincerity. Instead, the truth behind their words - is entirely focused on intoxicating greed that threatens our very existence. And again this is not true of all Republicans, however, this number appears to quite small. Why is it that the Bush's administration and the Trump's administration both began under a cloud of suspicion of clandestine unethical tactics? The unmistakably common ground between these two administration is deception - beginning with the Bush's administration there ispreponderance use of the doublespeak the intentionally deceiving language and with the Trump's administration the deception is unbelievably extremely blatant - as demonstrated in numerous televised interviews with news journalists .And why have both administrations been involved in ruthless tactics - attacking anyone who questions their operations, or refused to be coerced to bend to their demands i.e. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor? Pope Francis appears to be their number one global target to destroy, because he denounces their two major efforts - their denial of the science of climate change and their efforts to maintained a globalization that values profits over human life.The questioned that needs to be answered - is how did these unethical people get ushered into political elected offices of power?

An Eerie Similarity

Ruthless and Clandestine Tactics

Bush's administration - Vatican’s Curia

The Bush's administration and the like - not only exploited societal antigay prejudices, it also appears that they used and continue to use blackmail threats to exploited the weakness of the repressed homosexual members among the curia and hierarchy. The members of the curia and hierarchy are easy prey to be blackmailed, however, the question is to what degree of coercion was involved and the means they used to reach their desired ends? Reviewing over the highly publicized ruthless and clandestine tactics associated with the years of Bush's administration, there is an unmistakable and eeriesimilarity with the tactics used by the curia that keeps immediately surfacing regarding the level intelligence and sophistication found in the orchestration and in the precision of the execution of these ruthless and clandestine tactics. The situation becomes ever more complex as to who is doing what to whom? A closer look, begs the question, whether this is a similarity or a collaboration or extortion by blackmail. Repressed closeted homosexuals make for easy prey for blackmail. Prior to the arrival of Pope Francis, it was clear that the hostile antics of repressed homosexuals of the curia had extremely secret accomplices on the outside. It mistakenly appeared or rather was assumed that the level intelligence and sophistication of the orchestration these antigay tactics originated within the curia, however, after the arrival of Pope Francis, it slowly became clearer that that the level of intelligence and sophistication is non-existence among the curia and hierarchy.

Pope Francis

is Not A

Repressed Homosexual

A

Striking Contrast

Exposes Those Who Are

Pope Francis is clearly not a repressed homosexual, because his all inclusive diversity of gathering all people together appears to consume his life - a real pastor. Any attempt to try to give rise to the toxic and overwhelming feelings of shame and guilt of repressed internalized antigay social and religious norms - is a futile attempt. Pope Francis simply does not react like a repressed homosexual. However, he is quite the contrast from the reaction of the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy that exposes them as repressed homosexuals. Looking back at, after the arrival of Pope Francis March 2013 - there was somewhat of an abrupt slow down in the hostile antigay tactics originating from within the curia. As Pope Francis, began in earnest reforming the curia and particularly he was respectful of gay people, especially at the 2014 session of Synod on Family that facilitated an open discussion on pastorally welcoming gay people and respecting long-term loving gay relationships, an immediate emotional outburst occurred that echoed among the members of the curia and hierarchy around the world in protest against it, though the objection from within the synod was reported to be small in number. Pope Francis's reaction towards gay was the complete opposite than the long established antigay hostile culture existing throughout the curia and hierarchy for the past 3 decades.

Different

S o c i a l

E n v i r o n m e n t s

Tango Dancing

vs

Nazi & McCarthyism

Exploiting Antigay Prejudices

The only significant difference between Pope Francis and the majority of the members of the curia, to account for Pope Francs's acceptance of gay people and the curia and hierarchy extreme aversion to gay people - was the social environments in which they were born and raised. The majority of the members of the curia were born in the hostile antigay social environments in Europe, especially in Nazi Germany. Cardinal Bruke was born and raised during the hostile antigay social environment of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt for homosexuals of the 1950s.In stark contrast, Pope Francis was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a social environment where two have been dancing the tango together since the late 1800s.This difference between social environments is consistent with the early childhood psychological developmental research growing up gay.Whether Pope Francis is gay, straight or bisexual, who knows, because there were no hostile antigay prejudices to internalized in the social environment in which he was born and rasied in. The early childhood internalization of the hostile antigay prejudices is a key determining factor whether or not someone is gay, at least this is overwhelming true among the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy, because the way it is expressed in adulthood is in the form of an antigay obsession of denial and rejection of gay people, these people are known as repressed homosexuals. The point is that Pope Francis unlike the majority of members of the curia and hierarchy behavior - he is not riddled with paralyzing almost catatonic fear of being exposed as being gay, nor with overwhelming feelings of shame and guilttherefore, he is not susceptible to being intimidated or extorted into being blackmail.The fact is that Pope Francis's work reforming the curia has been successful - it exposed the existence of the repressed homosexuals and to greater degree has exposed the fact that a great deal of extortion seems to be coming from the outside - because it is still slowing up his efforts to reform though it has not stopped hm.The longer Pope Francis continues his work refoming the curia and meeting the extraordinary needs of those who are suffering the most in the world - the more the corruption is being exposed including the people who are involved behind it. This situation appears quite complexed and being interconnected, at this point, however, this corruption has been identified. The attacks made against Pope Francis from the outside - speaks to his effectiveness of his reform work - along wth the entourage of people he works with. However, some of the ruthless tactics coming from outside the Vatican appear almost exactly identical to those presumed coming within the Vatican. It raises the question how much of the Vatican was been infiltrated by these men from the outside.

The fact of Pope Francis’s numerous examples risking his life endlessly reaching out to the marginalized of the world has not been forgotten. Pope Francis represents - a person who has struggled to build his life on Christ’s words - it is an example of the man who has build his house on solid rock that in the words of Christ - in the face of fierce retaliation by those who out of selfish greed have ignored the science climate change and on homosexuality have attempted to destroy his reputation, especially in Chile - they have not been successful. Pope Francis has not stopped working to reverse the mistreatment of gay people. His every strenuous effort to respect and to acknowledge the dignity of all people - the work that began long before he became pope - has not been in vain. Time and time again and time again - along with his work to reform the curia that has proven to be successful, because with each retaliation attack made against him - it has done more to identify his attackers and exposed the depth of their corruption, including the trail of their network of connections. These corrupted individuals represent the second half of the words of Christ regarding the soil that they built their houses on. Photo

The Wise and

Foolish Builders

…everyone who hears my

words and puts them into practice is like a wise man. He builds his house on the

rock. The rain comes down. The water rises. The winds

blow and beat against that house. But it does not fall. It is built on the rock. But everyone

who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man. He builds his house on sand. The rain comes down. The water rises. The winds blow and beat against

that house. And

it falls with a loud crashMatthew 7:24-27

Ginsburg, O'Connor received death threats after Republican criticisms

Friday 17 March 2006

[JURIST] US Supreme Court [official website] Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg [OYEZ profile] and former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor [OYEZ profile] have both said in recent speeches that they have been the target of death threats. In a speech [text] last month at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Ginsburg said someone called for the two justices' deaths in an internet chat room because they sometimes looked to foreign laws or court rulings when making their decisions. Ginsburg said the threat was apparently prompted by proposals made by Republicans in Congress that would prohibit the high court from looking to foreign law, but she defended the court's use of foreign decisions saying they were used for guidance only.

Since stepping down from the court, Justice O'Connor has complained that the criticism has hindered the court in making decisions in areas such as gay marriage, and echoed Ginsburg's contentions of death threats during a speech [NPR audio commentary] at Georgetown Law School last week. O'Connor made reference to remarks [JURIST report] by former House Majority leader Tom DeLay following the death of Terri Schiavo. DeLay called for the impeachment of all judges involved in the case and later remarked that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Many interpreted his remarks as a call for violence against judges. Security for judges is also becoming a national concern according to US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [official profile] who reported this week that 75 percent of the country's federal judges have requested home security systems [JURIST report] funded by the government…

Austin, Texas (CNN) -- A Texas jury on Wednesday convicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on charges of illegally funneling corporate money to help elect GOP candidates to the Texas Legislature.

DeLay was found guilty of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering, court bailiff Gilbert Soto said. He was accused of funneling $190,000 to help elect Republicans to the state House and Senate in 2002.

At the outset of the trial, DeLay predicted the jury would clear him, and he remained unrepentant after learning the verdict…

Newly retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took on conservative Republican critics of the courts in a speech Thursday. She told an audience at Georgetown University that Republican proposals, and their sometimes uncivil tone, pose a danger to the independence of the judiciary, and the freedoms of all Americans…

NINA TOTENBERG reporting:

In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O'Connor said that attacks on the Judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our Constitutional freedom. O'Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents, or the Congress, or governors, as she put it, really, really angry.

But, she continued, if we don't make them mad some of the time, we probably aren't doing our jobs as judges. And our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation's founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent Judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government, those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O'Connor, as the founding fathers knew, statutes and constitutions don't protect judicial independence, people do.

And then she took aim at former House GOP leader Tom DeLay [convicted of money laundering 2010]. She didn't name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year, when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortion, prayer and the Terry Schiavo case…

The response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint, said O'Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts. It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn't help, she says, when a high-profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. She didn't name him, but it was Texas Senator John Cornyn who made that statement after a Georgia judge was murdered in the courtroom and the family of a federal judge in Illinois murdered in the judge's home.

O'Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately for so-called judicial reforms, recommendations for the massive impeachment of judges, stripping the courts of jurisdiction and cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges. Any of these might be debatable, she says, as long as they are not retaliation for decisions that political leaders disagree with. I, said O'Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning.

Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former Communist countries, where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O'Connor said we must be ever vigilant against those who would strong-arm the Judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

Some members of Congress want to create a position of "inspector general" to oversee the federal judiciary. The inspector general would watch for conflicts of interest, or abuses of power. But critics of the plan say the result could be to punish judges forunpopular rulings.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner is upping the ante in his campaign to monitor what he sees as a nationwide problem of judicial misconduct.

Last week, the Republican called for the impeachment of a federal judge here in California who is accused of unethical conduct, and last spring he proposed legislation to create a judicial inspector general. It's an idea that is anathema to most federal judges.

NINA TOTENBERG reporting:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has called the inspector general proposal a scary idea, reminiscent of the way the old Soviet Union operated to target disfavored judges. And Chief Justice John Roberts has privately ridiculed the proposal as a solution in search of a problem…

…So why not an independent inspector general? Critics say that the position would become a power center in itself and would inevitably pose a threat to judicial independence, especially under Congressman Sensenbrenner's broadly worded law…

TOTENBERG: But judges fear an inspector general would end up targeting those who make unpopular rulings, and critics see the proposal as a sort of surrogate attack on the courts. Professor Gillers.

Prof. GILLERS: I think it's a cheap shot. The problems that it means to address are simply not there. So a solution that is overstated, inarticulately drafted, in search of a problem that doesn't exist.

The founders realized there has to be someplace where being right is more important than being popularor powerful,

and where fairnesstrumps strength. And in our country, that place is supposed to be the

courtroom.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

Justice O'Connor Criticizes Campaign Finance Ruling

January 26, 2010 - NPR Nina Totenberg

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor weighed in today on a controversial decision by her former colleagues on the high court. She said that judicial independence in state courts will be severely compromised by last weeks ruling striking down bans on corporate spending on elections. More than 80 percent of state judges are elected. And while these elections used to be low-profile affairs, big money has transformed them in recent years…

NINA TOTENBERG: Since her retirement five years ago, OConnor has traveled the country, tirelessly defending the idea of judicial independence. As she put it today, two of the complaints that the nations founders had against King George centered on the absence of judicial independence in the colonial courts.

…Ms. SANDRA DAY OCONNOR (Former Supreme Court Justice): The founders realized there has to be someplace where being right is more important than being popular or powerful, and where fairness trumps strength. And in our country, that place is supposed to be the courtroom.

TOTENBERG: But unlike in the federal system where judges have life tenure, in most states, judges must stand for competitive election on a regular basis. And in recent years, special-interest spending has grown exponentially in state judicial elections, with the record amount of money spent being nearly $14.5 million for a single judicial seat in Alabama…

…TOTENBERG: …In strikingdown the ban oncorporate contributions last week, the Supreme Court reversed a major campaign finance decision written by OConnor just seven years ago, and her displeasure was palpable. Ignoring the role of special-interest money, particularly in judicial election, she said, is like ignoring an alligator in your bath tub.

The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.

Mrs. Rosa Parks is one of our country’s most important historical figures. Often referred to as “the mother of the civil rights movement,” she was the spark that set off the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Contrary to the folkloric accounts of her civil rights role, Mrs. Parks was not too tired to move from her seat. Rather, she had been a knowledgeable NAACP stalwart for many years, and gave the organization the incident it needed to move against segregation in the unreconstructed heart of the Confederacy, Montgomery, AL.

Mrs. Parks headed the Youth Division of the Montgomery NAACP branch for years. She is the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, and the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal…

As a new class of million-dollar political donors rises, conservatives are fighting for continued secrecy around their contributions. Strategist Karl Rove is citing a 1950s Supreme Court case that protected NAACP members, arguing that conservative donors are also being subjected to intimidation.

This election year, secret money played a bigger role than in any other presidential campaign since Richard Nixon's. The nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation says secretly funded groups spent well over $200 million. And four-fifths of it helped Republicans…

'Intimidation And Harassment'

Rove, whose group Crossroads GPS was a leader in the secret fundraising, says disclosure advocates have a hidden agenda.

"They want to intimidate people into not giving to ... these conservative efforts," he said on Fox News.

And here is where Rove and Parks cross paths: In defending secret money, Rove invokes that Supreme Court case, NAACP v. Alabama. He lines up Crossroads GPS on the same side as Parks and the NAACP, and he says the transparency advocates make the same argument as the segregationists…

A 'False Symmetry’?

But the question is whether the two situations are similar…

"One of the reasons why the NAACP required special protections at that time [is] they were a minority group that law enforcement couldn't or wouldn't protect," says Dale Ho, a lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

He says conservatives are creating a "false symmetry" between those civil rights activists and today's millionaire donors. "In none of these recent cases that I'm aware of in the past five years has anyone ever alleged that law enforcement couldn't protect them adequately," Ho says.

A Right To Secrecy?

At the University of Chicago Law School, constitutional scholar Geoffrey Stone scoffs at the conservative argument, calling its proponents "a bunch of overly sensitive, thin-skinned billionaires who want to be able to have profound influence on the political process without being in any wayaccountable."

In the years since the NAACP v. Alabama decision, courts have never extended it to cover donors in the usual conservative-liberal, Republican-Democratic debates.

A related case did go to the Supreme Court in 2010. Challenging a state disclosure law, it sought to withhold the names of people who had petitioned against gay marriage…

The U.S. Supreme Court has once again erased from the books a major provision of the nation's campaign finance law. By a 5-4 vote, the justices removed the cap on the total amount of money that donors can contribute to candidates and parties in each election. Until today, that limit was $123,000. But the Supreme Court said that that limit violates donors' First Amendment rights of free speech. So, as of today, there is no limit…

NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: The high court's ruling is the latest in a series of decisions that have all but demolished the campaign reforms adopted by Congress beginning 40 years ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Those reforms were aimed at restoring public confidence by preventing rich contributors from essentially buying votes with their contributions.

In 2010, however, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and unions could spend an unlimited amount on their own to influence elections. And today, in a case brought by the Republican National Committee, the court struck down the limit on the total amount that individual donors can give directly to candidates and parties.

…TOTENBERG: The court's decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, reversed a contrary ruling from 40 years ago. He said the aggregate limit of $123,000 is unconstitutional because it can have the effect of limiting the number of candidates an individual can support with maximum contributions. The government, he said, may not anymore restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse.

…TOTENBERG:Today’s opinion, he said, eviscerates our nation's campaign finance laws, allowing single individuals to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or to a candidate's campaign. Where money calls the tune, he said, the voices of the people will not be heard and a cynical public can lose interest in political participation altogether. Campaign reformers echoed those concerns.

Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 said today's ruling would allow the House and Senate leadership to form joint committees with all their congressional candidates and seek single contributions of as much as $2.5 million from individual donors.

FRED WERTHEIMER: The court is in the process of creating a new class of American political oligarchs [1. a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution, 2.a very rich businessman with a great deal of political influence] and that is coming at the expense of the voices and interests of more than 300 million Americans.

TOTENBERG: More money will be flowing into the system from big donors to influence outcomes, increasing the potential for corruption. But with party leaders able to raise huge sums, that will also increase their leverage with the rank-and-file members of Congress…

WASHINGTON — For years, Washington had been warned that doom lurked just beyond the levees. And for years, the White House and Congress had dickered over how much money to put into shoring up century-old dikes and carrying out newer flood control projects to protect the city of New Orleans.

As recently as three months ago, the alarms were sounding -- and being brushed aside.

In late May, the New Orleans district of the Army Corps of Engineers formally notified Washington that hurricane storm surges could knock out two of the big pumping stations that must operate night and day even under normal conditions to keep the city dry.

Also, the Corps said, several levees had settled and would soon need to be raised. And it reminded Washington that an ambitious flood-control study proposed four years before remained just that -- a written proposal never put into action for lack of funding…Read more: http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/04/nation/na-levee4

New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Levee Failures 2005

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The failure of the levees and the flooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005, represent the first time in history that an engineering failure has brought about the destruction or near-destruction of a major U.S. city. The ASCE Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel stated that

“The catastrophic failure of New Orleans’s hurricane protection system represents one of the nation’s worst disasters ever.A storm of Hurricane Katrina’s strength and intensity is expected to cause major flooding and damage. A large proportion of the destruction from Hurricane Katrina was caused not only by the storm itself, however, but also by the storm’s exposure to engineering and engineering-related policy failures” (ASCE Review Panel 2007, p. v).

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the early morning of August 29, 2005, in southeast Louisiana to the east of New Orleans. Throughout the area, levees and flood walls failed or were breached in more than 50 locations. Eighty percent of the city of New Orleans was flooded, to a depth of more than 3 m (10 ft) in some neighborhoods. The extent of the destruction made it difficult to account for the victims, but the toll a year later was listed as 1,118 dead people and 135 missing and presumed dead. More than 400,000 citizens fled the city, many never to return. Property damage reached tens of billions of dollars (ASCE Review Panel 2007, p. 1)… Read more: https://eng-resources.uncc.edu/failurecasestudies/dam-failure-cases/new-orleans-hurricane-katrina-levee-failures/

The Broken Promise of the Levees That Failed New Orleans

A piece of concrete serves as a reminder of how Hurricane Katrina shattered a city’s faith

Douglas Brinkley September 2015

How mind-boggling to think that so much Hurricane Katrina history is contained in a ribbed fragment of concrete. I was a Tulane University history professor that August of 2005, when the hurricane hit town and dozens of levees were overrun. Contemplating this section of breached flood wall ten years later—it’s from the London Avenue Canal—I’m astonished to remember that I thought this frail barrier could protect below-sea-level New Orleans neighborhoods from the Big One.

My flawed reasoning was that if the Netherlands had reclaimed miles from the North Sea since the devastating 1953 flood, then surely the nation that put Neil Armstrong on the moon had constructed a similarly reliable Dutch tool-kit of dikes, levees, pump houses and flood walls to protect the ragged-boot heel of Louisiana. I fully believed in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; after all, its reliance on lessons learned from Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and old-fashioned American can-doism meant New Orleans was securely fortified. That the federally funded flood walls looked unsafe and poorly constructed never concerned me, because in America we built structures—think Hoover Dam—the right way. It was my conceit that New Orleans, a city with enormous cultural richness, the greatest port on the nation’s greatest river, was safe… Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/broken-promise-levees-failed-new-orleans-180956326/

Sitting on the sidelines during a disaster is tough to do, even for a seasoned journalist. Hurricane Katrina provides many difficult choices for Americans who want to do something — anything — to assist victims of the storms. But the most valuable commodity may be leadership.

This has been a painful week for all Americans, this week of storms and floods and destruction. I'm sure that in every household in this country someone has gone to bed this week only to become totally awake with the words of displaced people echoing in their heads. I know there are people sitting down to dinner with family and friends who suddenly feel the beginnings of a bellyache, feeling irrationally guilty about a good dinner, not to mention taking out the trash, turning on the tap, flushing the toilet.

Sending money to the Red Cross is important, and everyone ought to do it, but somehow this terrible situation has made us feel that we have to get off the sidelines and onto the field because somebody has to do it. I say that as a professional sidelines stander. For all the years that I've covered politics and a few floods and earthquakes, I've been very clear that my job was to show up and then tell our listeners what I'd seen and heard. It's an article of faith with me that I serve a useful purpose on the sidelines, and I've never been tempted to wade into a demonstration, grab a banner and start marching. I have never wanted to grab a politician by the back of his neck and try to shake some sense into him or her. Well, almost never. But four long days watching suffering people waiting has tested my resolve.

It seems to be a question of leadership. People who should be leading the effort to help seem disorganized and ill-informed, urging dying people to be patient, denying realities that our own reporters have seen, that we have all seen. Local leaders are reduced to pleading on the national news for the personnel and vehicles and supplies needed to provide basic necessities for victims. And help must come from the outside. Local fire and police departments are filled, after all, with people whose own grandmothers are marooned on the second floor of a flooded house, whose own family homes are reduced to splinters, whose own families need their help. Outside troops and trucks and boats, buses, planes and helicopters are needed and, thankfully, are finally beginning to arrive.

The frustration that millions of Americans feel with this slow response is clear. You see it when the trickle of refugees from the flooded areas of the battered coast managed to get out. Towns and churches, clubs and businesses pounce on them and do everything they can think of to help them. All over the country people are raising money and offering shelter and sending trucks of supplies south. In some ways, that missing leadership is rising everywhere out of a national compassionate impulse to treat the victims of Hurricane Katrina as Americans want them to be treated.

There are many lessons here. Perhaps one is that, in our urgency to protect the nation against terrorist attacks which might be prevented, we've neglected planning and stockpiling for natural catastrophes which will happen. Hurricanes cannot be prevented, but surely these days of death and suffering caused by delay and neglect can be. It's a question of leadership.

ROME - Although most times of the year Pope Francis comes off as an upbeat, smiling figure, holiday seasons sometimes seem to bring the Old Testament prophet out of him - denouncing injustice, lamenting suffering, and openly anguishing along with the broken hearts of a fallen world.

It shouldn’t be any surprise, therefore, that Francis, for this holiday period, asked that a small card be printed and distributed, which on its reverse side carries the inscription, “The fruit of war,” running above the pope’s signature.

The front side of the card displays a picture taken by American photographer Joseph Roger O’Donnell, a Marine who worked for four years after the atomic blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki documenting their impact. The shot shows a young Japanese boy standing in line at a crematorium with his dead younger brother on his back.

Eleanor Roosevelt on her South Pacific tour 1943 - tells a joke related to the stupidity of war - in her Address to the Soldiers (Mrs. Roosevelt had four sons in WWII) - Transcript:

"Just as the Marines were in order to leave Guadalcanal, an officer found a private, feeling very sad and looking very depressed. Then he said, "What's the matter with you?" And he said, "Oh, I just can't go home. I haven't shot a Jap!" So the officer said, "Well, listen! I'll tell you what to do. You go up to that ridge over there. Jump up, all of a sudden, and say 'To hell with Hirohito!' They'll jump up other people all around, and if you shoot first, you'll get Jap!". So he came by a little while later, and the [private], still looking very gloomy and he said,"Did you do what I told you?" "Yes, Sir! I ran up there, and I said what you told me to say, and I said, 'To hell with Hirohito!' And they jumped up, as you said they would, and they all shouted, "To hell with Roosevelt!".

(Those days they could tell stories like that, about each being as stupid as the other.)

How did we come so close to the point of human extinction - climaxing with nuclear war attics of President Trump that immediately followed his election. Trump's borderline narcissistic efforts to self-destruct himself and all the world with him has not been done alone. Trump has been accompanied by the destructive and devious efforts of the leaders in the US Congress, who have slowly been removing, behind closed doors - all regulations of the banks, the US economy and the trade that were set up after the Great Depression of 1929 to protect our country from a repeat of this devastating disaster, in order to protect the human rights of all our citizens, especially the poor, of not only the USA but of the world. How much did the exploiting of the repressed homosexuals predominate among the members of the curia and the hierarchy by blackmail threats of exposure - contribute to the building up and maintaining of the entrenched corruption existing in the US Congress that enabled the Reaganomics- deregulations of the safeguards that paved the way to the dominance and control of globalization? Exploiting the ignorance and fear of societal antigay prejudices has proven to be an extremely powerful political weapon that gave Hitler the dictatorship of Germany in 1933 and to silenced and removed his oppositions paving the way to nazism leading to the death of 70 million people. Someone(s) have been studying history and they are is repeating Hitler’s effective exploitation of the ignorance and fear of societal antigay prejudices to usher into powerful political elected offices supporters of globalization. The death toll related to globalization valuing profits over human life is a form of structural violence - that is almost entirely invisible, however, it is just as deadly as direct violence.

Hurricane Katrina 2005 exposed the process of structural violence by the years of continual lack of allocating of the necessary US funding for the New Orleans levees. It exposes much more than that. It exposes the organizational culture of the US Congress - their compete lack of concern for the safety and well-being of US citizens, including internationally as well. There was not only a break down over years of New Orleans levees, but the same time element is true about FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and numerous other connecting US Agencies. It is clear that the intoxication of dollar signs $$$ had anesthetized their brains that accounts for their lethargic and apathetic concern for the screaming drowning dying victims of Katrina. If you have ever worked in a hospital ER unit, or the like - these people are so conditioned that the immediacy and the synergic team effort is almost automatic that they could do it in their sleep.The people in charge, the leadership of the US government at the time of Katrina - were clueless about empathy. What was even worst were the suggestions that US government officials made, at the time, that New Orleans should relocate. Heartless!!!It was the complete absence of remorse - for the years of US federal tax cuts - denying the necessary funding to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to maintain the structures of New Orleans levees. It is the definition of and an example of sociopathic behavior that appears to be the organizational culture of the US Congress, the White House and including the curia and hierarchy of the Vatican, again, of course, this is not a generalization that includes everyone. A striking contrast that is the complete opposite of this overall accepted sociopathic behavior is Pope Francis. Unfortunately, this makes Pope Francis a real target to destroy. The global publicity that Pope Francis's statement received, at the very end of his trip to Chile about slander in regards the sexual abuse, appears to have been staged meant to distract the world attention away from his efforts to highlight the lethal harmful effects of Climate Change the very next day as he traveled to Peru. Pope Francis appears to have been provoked to make such a so uncharacteristic statement by the Chilean reporter. Because the statement that he made - appears to be rebuke not against the victims of child sexual abuse but a rebuke to a harassing Chilean reporter. With the knowledge of the above - it becomes easier to understand the motivation of how they could exploit the repressed closeted homosexuals among the curia and hierarchy with blackmail threats of public exposure. Heartless!!!

Repressed closeted homosexuals, especially those in highly visible positions of authority i.e. politicians, cardinals, bishops etc. - are easy targets for blackmail threats of public exposure, because the overwhelming shame and guilt, the symptoms generated by the effects of the internalized homophobia of early childhood, are self-perpetuating, as are the respective symptoms related to nearly all forms of child abuse. Therefore, these outside blackmail threats of public exposure - is like tapping into an artesian well of bubbling or rather gushing overwhelming emotional hysteria of internalized homophobic shame and guilt completely void of any accompanying rationale (an artesian well is a well in which water is under pressure; especially : one in which the water flows to the surface naturally).Exploiting the ignorance and fear of societal antigay prejudices is a masterful way to gain control over people - to promote the ideologies of nazism and globalization.

Excerpt below taken from:

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2017

Part 4A - Homosexuality - “If it is NOT a choice, if it is NOT a disease, in the perspective of faith it can only be a GIFT” - Bishop Cruz, Brazil - ’seeks to END ‘PREJUDICES that KILL’

The test of this vile hidden antigay destructive force that engulfs the Vatican and the majority of the members of the hierarchy around the world is as long as there is notone single open word is publicly mentioned that is supportive of the science on homosexuality or supportive of gay people - there is calm - there is peace, but it is all a false facade (a house built of cards) made into being an “innate" command of God. However, just the mere mentioning of the word "homosexual" will create a fierce emotional negative outburst of the terror of child. The terror of a child being forced to suppress his gay sexual orientation. This hysterical child like terror was most evident and was substantially documented - described as an earthquake, at the time of the release of the midterm report of the Synod on Family October 2014 that revealed the open discussion about considering how to be pastorally more welcoming of gay people and their families. The curia’s and hierarchy’s hysterical reaction at the mere mentioning of the word "homosexual" brings to mind Mel Brooks’s 1974 movie “Young Frankenstein” a comedy that every time the name “Frau Blucher” is mentioned in the movie - we immediately hear horses whinny, as if in terror, followed by a crack of thunder...

Excerpt above taken from:

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2017

Part 4A - Homosexuality - “If it is NOT a choice, if it is NOT a disease, in the perspective of faith it can only be a GIFT” - Bishop Cruz, Brazil - ’seeks to END ‘PREJUDICES that KILL’

…In the developmental histories of gay men and women, periods of difficulty in acknowledging their homosexuality, either to themselves or to others, are often reported. Children who grow up to be gay rarely receive family support in dealing with antihomosexual prejudices. On the contrary, beginning in childhood--and distinguishing them from racial and ethnic minorities--gay people are often subjected to the antihomosexual attitudes of their own families and communities (Drescher et al., 2004). Antihomosexual attitudes include homophobia (Weinberg, 1972), heterosexism (Herek, 1984), moral condemnations of homosexuality (Drescher, 1998) and antigay violence (Herek and Berrill, 1992). Hiding activities learned in childhood often persist into young adulthood, middle age and even senescence, leading many gay people to conceal important aspects of themselves.

Closeted individuals frequently cannot acknowledge to themselves, let alone to others, their homoerotic feelings, attractions and fantasies. Their homosexuality is so unacceptable that it must be kept out of conscious awareness and cannot be integrated into their public persona. Consequently, these feelings must be d i s s o c i a t e d from the self and h i d d e n from others…

…For example, a religious, homosexually self-aware man may choose a celibate life to avoid what, for him, would be the problematic integration of his religious and sexual identities…

…Strong antihomosexual feelings may represent an effort to control perceptions of a gay-basher's own sexual identity. This might translate as, "If I attack gay people, no one will think I am gay." Psychoanalysts call this defense "identification with the aggressor" (Freud, 1966). It may represent intrapsychic efforts to maintain a psychological distance from one's own homoerotic feelings. In other words, it is an effort to strengthen dissociative tendencies…

…Internalized, antihomosexual attitudes are often rigid and disdainful of compromise or “r e l a t i v i s m.” A patient's dogmatic belief system may not recognize the concept of respectful disagreement…

Did a Secret Vatican Report on Gay Sex and Blackmail Bring Down the Pope? - FEB 22, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI has claimed that he's resigning the papacy next week because of old age. But according to the major Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the real reason he resigned is because he did not want to deal the repercussions of a secret 300-page Vatican dossier that allegedly found, among other things, an underground network of high-ranking gay clergy, complete with sex parties and shady dealings with the already scandal-ridden Vatican bank…

The Vatican has a Velvet Mafia — and the Velvet Mafia is being blackmailed. The dossier alleges that a gay lobby exists within the Church, and has some sort of control on the careers of those in the Vatican. The dossier also alleges that this group isn't as covert as it thinks — and got blackmailed by people on the outside. "The cardinals were said to have uncovered an underground gay network, whose members organise sexual meetings in several venues in Rome and Vatican City, leaving them prone to blackmail," reads The Sydney Morning Herald's translation of the report, and The Guardian adds: "They included a villa outside the Italian capital, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlour in the centre, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop.”…

A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders…

…Last May Pope Benedict's butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and charged with having stolen and leaked papal correspondence that depicted the Vatican as a seething hotbed of intrigue and infighting.

The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were "united by sexual orientation".

In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to "external influence" from laymen with whom they had links of a "worldly nature". The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are a grave sin. But the existence of active gay prelates in the Vatican bureaucracy known as the Roman Curia has been considered a poorly held secret for centuries.

Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent for the British Catholic weekly The Tablet, says the normal definition of a lobby as an organized group of people pushing a specific agenda does not apply here.

He prefers to call it a gay subculture.

"Many of these people in the Vatican that are gay and even acting out are extremely conservative," Mickens says. "These are not people that want to change the church's teaching on homosexuality — not at all.”…

Cleaning Up Church Administration

But inside the Vatican, "the big game is blackmail. It's a mutual recrimination system — that's what is really twisted about the whole thing," says Mickens. " 'I know he is doing this'; 'He knows I'm doing that'; checkmate. And that is how the game works. It is a bad, bad system.”

…As soon as Francis became pope, he was given a secret report commissioned by his predecessor Benedict XVI about the leaks and scandals that had plagued his papacy.

Vatican analyst Marco Politi says the report focused on the major problems afflicting the Vatican administration.

"The three hot issues in the Vatican Curia are issues about career, about personal ambitions; are issues about money, which means corruption; and are issues about sex," he says…

…“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters, speaking in Italian but using the English word “gay.”…

“So much is written about the gay lobby. I have yet to find on a Vatican identity card the word ‘gay,’ ” Francis said, chuckling. “They say there are some gay people here. I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good.”

…He added that such a lobby would be an issue, but that he did not have anything against gay people and that their sins should be forgiven like those of all Catholics. Francis said that homosexuals should be treated with dignity, and that no one should be subjected to blackmail or pressure because of sexual orientation.

“The problem isn’t having this orientation. The problem is making a lobby,” he said...

Fostering the growth of repressed homosexuals makes for a highly salient and persuasive political weapon, because the lifelong harmful effects that is caused - begins in early childhood years by the internalization of unsubstantiated antigay social and religious norms that is seamlessly forgotten by the child. Then, as an adult these same internalization of unsubstantiated antigay social and religious norms are then mistakenly believed to be innate. However, a flashback, to the emotional trauma of this early childhood abuse is immediately brought to the surface of consciousness by the mere mentioning of the word homosexual or gay, in the form of hysteria, and completely void of any rational explanation. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explains how trauma or the re-experiencing trauma “flashbacks” will shut down the rational brain and how the emotional brain takes over.

Brain, Mind, and Body in The Healing of Trauma - with Bessel van der Kolk MD

…my group and I did the very first neuroimaging study on people having flashbacks. That turned out to be a very interesting study. We discovered that when people relive their trauma, a fair amount of their brain actually goes offline, particularly in the left anterior prefrontal cortex where the capacity for analyzing, understanding, and language is located. So, essentially we were able to visualize how people become dumbfounded...

...and struck with speechless terror. That is a very big issue. The other thing we discovered or confirmed was that when people relive their trauma, their survival brain, their emotional brain, becomes very activated, and their frontal lobes, their more rational brain, gets deactivated, so that people sort of “take leave of their senses” in some ways—so that people’s cognitions fail them. We learned that the insula, the part of the brain that’s involved in registering and noting what is going on in your body, becomes impaired, so there’s a decreased body–mind connection that needs to be reactivated. Various people have discovered that the medial prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain that allows you to feel yourself, notice yourself and be in touch with yourself—gets quite thrown off track, basically, so that it is really hard to notice what goes on inside of you and to manage what goes on inside of you… Read more:

Therefore, fostering the growth of repressed homosexuals, throughout the curia and hierarchy is essential so that they can be continually vulnerable to being blackmailed by outsiders for exploitive purposes is dependent on keeping “gays” who are open and accepting of their sexual orientation - recognized as fully functioning healthy mental adult behavior - out of the Church, because they would bring the rational brainback online by beginning and maintaining the ongoing dialogue between the science and religion on homosexuality. The rational brain would tone down the hysteria by dispelling the ignorance contained in the internalized (homophobia) that is the early childhood exposure to unsubstantiated (not supported or proven by evidence) antigay social and religious norms that was generating the obsessivefear, senseless guilt and overwhelming feelings of self-hatred.

Internalized homophobia

...internalized homophobia represents a form of stress that is internal and insidious. In the absence of overt negative events, and even if one’s minority status is successfully concealed, lesbians and gay men may be harmed by directing negative social values toward the self... Read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2072932/pdf/nihms32623.pdf

The rational brain would help to tone down the lifelong harmful effects disrupting the gay closeted - repressed individual's ability to live a fully functioning life - with the substantiated facts of the science on homosexuality.

...Clinicians use the term internalized homophobia to refer to the internalization of societal antigay attitudesin lesbians and gay men (e.g., Malyon, 1981–1982). Meyer and Dean (1998) defined internalized homophobia as “the gay person’s direction of negative social attitudes toward the self, leading to a devaluation of the self and resultant internal conflictsand poor self-regard” (p. 161). After they accept their stigmatized sexual orientation, LGB people begin a process of coming out. Optimally, through this process they come to terms with their homosexuality and develop a healthy identity that incorporates their sexuality (Cass, 1979, 1984;Coleman, 1981–1982;Troiden, 1989). Internalized homophobia signifies the failure of the coming out process to ward off stigma and thoroughly overcome negative self-perceptions and attitudes (Morris et al., 2001). Although it is most acute early in the coming out process, it is unlikely that internalized homophobia completely abates even when the person has accepted his or her homosexuality...Because of the strength of early socialization experiences, and because of continued exposure to antigay attitudes, internalized homophobia remains an important factor in the gay person’s psychological adjustment throughout life. Gay people maintain varying degrees of residual antigay attitudes that are integrated into their self- perception that can lead to mental health problems (Cabaj, 1988;Hetrick & Martin, 1984;Malyon, 1981–1982;Nungesser, 1983). Gonsiorek (1988) called such residual internalized homophobia “covert,” and said, “Covert forms of internalized homophobia are the most common. Affected individuals appear to accept themselves, yet sabotagetheir own efforts in a variety of ways” (p. 117)…

These are the same facts on the science on homosexuality that have been accepted by all the major medical and mental health associations and organizations around the world stating that homosexuality is a normal and positive variation of human sexuality.

I n t e r n a l i z e d H o m o p h o b i a

Prejudice, Social Stress, and Mental Health in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Populations: Conceptual Issues and Research Evidence

Psychol Bull. 2003 September ; 129(5): 674–697.

Ilan H. Meyer - Columbia University

Internalized homophobia

—In the most proximal position along the continuum from the environment to the self, internalized homophobia represents a form of stress that is internal and insidious. In the absence of overt negative events, and even if one’s minority status is successfully concealed, lesbians and gay men may be harmed by directing negative social values toward the self. Thoits (1985, p. 222) described such a process of self-stigmatization, explaining that “role-taking abilities enable individuals to view themselves from the imagined perspective of others. One can anticipate and respond in advance to others’ reactions regarding a contemplated course of action.” ... Read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2072932/pdf/nihms32623.pdf

This open dialogue between science and religion on homosexuality would begin restoring the truth about homosexuality. Through this process of dialogue, that is supported by Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI - is the only way that truth is obtained. And it this process to obtain truth that then gives value and meaning to love. It would prove that antigay prejudices are built on nothing more than irrational fears about gay people. It would spell out the fact that these antigay prejudices and are generated and sustained by societal's culpable ignorance that stems from the complacent growing selfishness, indifference and irresponsibility to care for suffering needs of others. There is the lack of leadership among the members of the curia and the hierarchy, who are unwilling or too afraid of being blackmailed for their gay indiscretions - to forget themselves and support Pope Francis in his leadership effort to search for the truth found through the dialogue between the science and religion on homosexuality. It would prove that antigay prejudices are built on nothing more than irrational fears and ignorance and not on truth that they have nothing to do with LOVE. They are not "innate" as in built in by God, but rather quite the opposite. And when subjecting a child to these unsubstantiated antigay prejudices it is not called love - it is called child abuse!!!

Allowing “gays” who are open and accepting of their sexual orientation into the Church would completely deactivate these unsubstantiated antigay prejudices as a powerful political weapon, first, used by Hitler that led to the atrocities of Nazism and then for the promotion of Reaganomics - widespread tax cuts, decreased social spending, increased military spending and the deregulation of domestic markets i.e. free-market economics - known as Globalization.

Who benefits by maintaining the growth of repressed homosexuals to be the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy? Or rather who benefits from keeping the lifelong harmful effectives constant - that are caused to children in their early childhood years by unsubstantiated antigay social and religious norms? Who benefits by keeping the science on homosexuality suppressed? Are they the same people who ignore the science on climate change and the same people who did not have the leaderships qualities needed to help the victims of Katrina in 2005??? To begin answering these questions - we begin by asking who has benefited by the dominance of repressed homosexuals in the curia and hierarchy for the past more than 30 years?

What is clear is that keeping gays out of the Church is essential to keeping the science on homosexuality suppressed. This is achieved by blackmailing the repressed homosexuals members of the curia and hierarchy to keep gays out of the Church. It ensures the maintenance of the ignorance and fear associated with the unsubstantiated antigay social and religious norms as effective political weapon to be used as a means of controlling the people to foster and protect unfettered economic liberalism of Globalization.

I have the first question ready, but then I decide not to follow the script that I had prepared for myself, and I ask him point-blank: “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” The pope stares at me in silence. I ask him if this is a question that I am allowed to ask.... He nods that it is, and he tells me: “I do not know what might be the most fitting description.... I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”

Thinking With the Church

“The image of the church I like is that of the holy, faithful people of God. This is the definition I often use, and then there is that image from the Second Vatican Council’s ‘Dogmatic Constitution on the Church’ (No. 12). Belonging to a people has a strong theological value. In the history of salvation, God has saved a people. There is no full identity without belonging to a people. No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships.

“The people itself constitutes a subject. And the church is the people of God on the journey through history, with joys and sorrows. Thinking with the church, therefore, is my way of being a part of this people. And all the faithful, considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief, and the people display this infallibilitas in credendo, this infallibility in believing, through a supernatural sense of the faith of all the people walking together. This is what I understand today as the ‘thinking with the church’ of which St. Ignatius speaks. When thedialogue among the people and the bishops and the pope goes down this road and is genuine, then it is assisted by the Holy Spirit. So this thinking with the church does not concern theologians only.

“This is how it is with Mary: If you want to know who she is, you ask theologians; if you want to know how to love her, you have to ask the people. In turn, Mary loved Jesus with the heart of the people, as we read in the Magnificat. We should not even think, therefore, that ‘thinking with the church’ means only thinking with the hierarchy of the church.”

After a brief pause, Pope Francis emphasizes in a very direct manner the following point, in order to avoid misunderstandings: “And, of course, we must be very careful not to think that this infallibilitas of all the faithful I am talking about in the light of Vatican II is a form of populism. No; it is the experience of ‘holy mother the hierarchical church,’ as St. Ignatius called it, the church as the people of God, pastors and people together. The church is the totality of God’s people…

From the end of 2017 on through the beginning of 2018, like out-of-the-blue, in almost rapid-fire succession came a number of surprising attacks made against gay people, including those people who are supportive of gay people were forthcoming through the Vatican. However, it is clear that these attacks originated and were orchestrated outside of the Vatican’s bureaucracy and that they are in direct opposition to the spirit of "dialogue" and what Pope Francis had stated in his apostolic exhortation "Amoris Laetitia” that

…The Church makes her own the attitude of the Lord Jesus, who offers his boundless love to each person without exception. During the Synod, we discussed the situation of families whose members include persons who experience same-sex attraction, a situation not easy either for parents or for children. We would like before all else to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration…

It is, as if, the Vatican was being used as a patsy(pasty - a person who is easily taken advantage of, especially by being cheated or blamed for something), by outside groups that for all intents and purposes - they are directly opposed to Christ’s teachings of loving one another, as he has loved us and in this way everyone will know that we are his disciples (John 13:34-35). This is explicitly identifiable by their complete exclusion of the science on homosexuality that according to Pope Benedict XVI writes that - truth is a product obtained through the ongoing "dialogue" of light of reason (science) and the light of faith (religion). It is the formation of this light of truth that gives meaning and value to charity (love), and that for without truth there is no love. Benedict clearly states that “Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development…(http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html).” Therefore, even though these so called “ultra-conservative” (https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/07/03/pope-says-hes-not-looking-shoulder-ultra-conservatives/), groups, individual members of the hierarchy, news media networks and the like i.e. ArchbishopCharles J.Chaput of Philadelphia, Lepanto ("militant traditionalist organization"), LifeSitenews, EWTN, etc. claim to be Catholic, as they incessantly and ruthlessly attack gay people, including those who are supportive of gay people - by their actions alone they have proven that they are most definitely not Catholic. This has been predominantly what Pope Francis has had to put up with, in the last 5 years of his papacy - in his reintroduction of the pastoral instructions noted plainly in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that we are to respect the dignity of gay people, as we are to do for all people. This is the essence, the example Christ's love - the sine qua non ("without which it could not be") commandment that Christ gave us all before he died for us:

“A new command

I give you:

Love one another.

As I have loved you,

so you must

love one another.

By this everyone will know that

you are my disciples,

if you love one another.”

John 13:34-35

However, regardless of the fact that this is not Pope Francis's directives that he so courageously imparts to us all that we are to love and respect the dignity of gay people without exception that they are in fact the all encompassing directives coming to us from Christ, as stated in the one and only commandment that Jesus Christ ever gave to us personally just before he was to die for us all - they are still so fiercely upsetting to the outside blackmailers of the homosexual repressed members of the curia and hierarchy, who claim that they are devout disciples of Christ. It exposes these ultraconservatives to be the enemies of Christ - because they do not have the kind of love that Christ explains we must have to be his disciples. It is clear by their absence of the love of Christ that these violent antigay groups - show no sign of loving one another as Christ has loved us. It is the way that we love one another - do to the point that we are willing to die for others that remains ultimate key factor of the type of love that is identifies us through time, across cultures and individually both on earth and in heaven - more than any other activity - as a disciple as a disciple of Christ. It all depends on how much we love one another, as Christ has loved us. Therefore, unless, we are willing to give up our life out of love for another or others, regardless if they are sinners, even notorious sinners - we are not a follower, or a disciple of Christ - no matter how much we claim to be devout conservative or even ultra-conservative or Orthodox - we have no love of Christ in us.

Pope Francis restating the words of Christ's love - regarding respecting gay people are always strongly vocally renounced and sidestepped by these antigay ultraconservatives groups to instead - maintain the exclusion and demonization of gay people, how or in what way can this be identified as the kind of love that Christ has shown for us all? One wonders what kind of blackmail information - some of these outside antigay groups have on the members of the curia and the hierarchy in order to control them all to clearly keep the unsubstantiated antigay social and religious norms untouched by any rational thought i.e. the science on homosexuality. It has been documented extensively that the kind of the blackmail information that these outside antigay groups have on a number of the members of the curia and hierarchy is all related to gay sexual situations. This paralyzing almost catatonic fear of these repressed Vatican prelates of being exposed as a gay person - forever appears from their perspective to be a fate worst than death!!! Why??? Why should they even care what these antigay outside groups have to say, because they are emphatically not about the love of Christ??? Nor are they interested in being taught the truth about homosexuality. Unless, their extreme apprehension not in any way to disobey whatever request they make of these men in the Vatican - is a confirmation that they are truly closeted repressed homosexual behavior.

Images of same-sex couples removed from World Meeting of Families booklet

Jan 30, 2018

Five picturesfeaturing same-sex couples have been removed from a reissued booklet sent to Catholic parishes in preparation for the visit to Ireland next august of Pope Francis for a World Meeting of Families event.

The text of the publication has also been edited. A line in the original booklet has now been removed. That line stated: “While the Church upholds the ideal of marriage as a permanent commitment between a man and a woman, other unions exist which provide mutual support to the couple. Pope Francis encourages us never to exclude but to accompany these couples also, with love, care and support.”…

…The Irish Independent understands that Dr McAleese's views on gay rights is the reason the prelate objected. She has previously spoken about how son Justin, as a devout young Catholic, was bullied because he was gay…

DUBLIN — An attempt to stop a former president of Ireland from speaking at an international conference on women's rights, which was due to be held in the Vatican next month, is causing a stir in Ireland as the country prepares to host the Vatican-organized World Meeting of Families in August.

The Voices of Faith conference has been held at the Vatican on March 8, International Women's Day, the last four years. Organizers say when the Vatican reviewed the list of speakers for this year's event, three speakers were not approved, one of them Mary McAleese, who was president of Ireland from 1997-2011.

Chantal Götz, managing director of Voices of Faith, said that Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the prefect of the Vatican's Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, had objected to the three speakers. No reasons were given, according to Götz, but McAleese has been outspoken on gay rights and women's ordination.

The matter has gained extra attention because Farrell's dicastery is the main organizer of the World Meeting of Families, which is being promoted as a major event for the Irish church.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin distanced himself from controversy, issuing a statement Friday saying neither henorhis offices "were consulted by the Vatican in relation to this matter.”…

Top German cardinal signals cautious support for blessing same-sex couples

Feb 5, 2018

One of Roman Catholicism’s most influential cardinals has signaled cautious support for Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples, indicating movement on the issue after he and other German Catholic leaders opposed the legalization of "marriage for all" last year.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the archbishop of Munich, said in a radio interview Saturday (Feb. 3) that the Catholic Church must find pastoral ways to respond to the challenges of changing societal views and should be welcoming to gay people who seek its spiritual guidance.

Marx stopped short of a full endorsement of blessings for same-sex couples, which would be difficult in a church that opposes gay marriage as unnatural and does not now officially bless these couples. But his positive comments made it clear he was open to approving such benedictions in private ceremonies.

Two German bishops have recently come out in favor of blessing same-sex couples and urged the church to consider allowing the practice. Marx, as head of the national bishops' conference, is the top Catholic prelate in Germany.

"The issue is how the church can do justice to the challenges that new living conditions and new insights bring," Marx said in the interview broadcast on Bavarian Radio…

Church’s move to exclude ex-president show resistance to women’s equality

The invitation to the 2018 International Women’s Day meeting of the Voice of Faith conference to be held in the Vatican in Rome on March 8th reads: “We live in time marked by change, but there are places where gender equality is being systematically overlooked. The Catholic Church is one of them.”

Among the panellists invited to address the issue of why the Church is so slow in recognising that women have the “expertise, skills and gifts to play full leadership roles” was the former president of Ireland, Mary McAleese. So far, so uncontroversial, one would think. Dr McAleese, a Catholic, a canon lawyer, well-known to the hierarchy in the Vatican where she visited as president, has had things to say about the secondary position of women in the church, as have many women within the church.

She did play a prominent role in the 2015 marriage equality referendum when she spoke movingly of her son Justin and the difficulties he faced as a gay manand a Catholic within a church that rejects homosexuality. However, this conference, given the theme, would be a space to address the role of women in the church, a theme McAleese is eminently qualified to address.

As is customary practice, when such an event is taking place in the Vatican, the list of invited conference speakers was submitted to Cardinal Kevin Farrell, a native Dubliner, who is currently Prefect of the Congregation for Laity, Family and Life. He returned the list to the organiser, Chantal Götz of the Catholic Fidel Götz Foundation, with three names removed, including that of McAleese. Götz was understandably dismayed but Farrell was unyielding. McAleese, Ssenfuka Joanita Warry, a Ugandan LGBT activist, and Zuzanna Radzik, a Polish theologian specialising in Christian-Jewish relations, remained forbidden from participating… Read more:

The Chilean reporter who managed, as reported, to get up close to pope Francis, at the very end of his trip to Chile, who shouted out a question about Bishop Barros, sounds more than a bit staged, set-up. It appears that it was meant to hassle Pope Francis to frustrate him enough, to get him to react in anger, when Francis was understandably warn out ending his long and intense trip to Chile. The statement that Pope Francis made would seem was meant specifically to Chilean reporter, only, as a warning to be cautious about slander and fake news. It was not meant for the victims of child abuse. It does not make sense that Pope Francis who plan this trip to Chile purposely to address this most agonizing situation of child sexual abuse that most people would not even have the courage to face that he even would be thinking in terms of what he shout back to the Chilean reporter. And what would be the motivation to get Pope Francis frustrated enough to get him to react in the manner that he did and then use it against him - it would cause a major, major global distraction a way from the issue of Climate Change that he intended highlight. And what group would benefit the most from this devious orchestration of this papal faux pas? Guess???

Pope Francis accuses Chilean church sexual abuse victims of slander

19 Jan 2018

Pope Francis has accused victims of Chile’s most notorious paedophile of slander, in an astonishing end to a visit meant to help heal the wounds of a sex abuse scandal that has cost the Catholic church its credibility in the country…

Part 4D - NAZI ABUSE OF SCIENCE -> GENOCIDE “RACIAL CLEANSING” & WAR CHILDHOOD -> CURIA - GENOCIDE of HOMOSEXUALS - - Part 4D - Homosexuality - “If it is NOT a choice, if it is NOT a disease, in the perspective of faith it can only be a GIFT” - Bishop Cruz, Brazil - ’seeks to END ‘PREJUDICES that KILL’

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple.

A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them.

As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery.

They put her in front of the crowd.

“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her.

What do you say?”

They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.

They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!”

Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

Part 4D - Update: 2/6/2018 - NAZI ABUSE OF SCIENCE -> GENOCIDE “RACIAL CLEANSING” & WAR CHILDHOOD -> CURIA -RE-ENACTING- NAZI GENOCIDE of HOMOSEXUALS - - Part 4D - Homosexuality - “If it is NOT a choice, if it is NOT a disease, in the perspective of faith it can only be a GIFT” - Bishop Cruz, Brazil - ’seeks to END ‘PREJUDICES that KILL'

Cardinal Marx, Germany - says ANTI-GAY DISCRIMINATION, NOT same-sex marriage, is DEFEAT for Church - the Church must also express its REGRET that it did NOTHING historically to OPPOSE the prosecution of homosexuals

…The forced suppression of a gay child’s sexual orientation during early childhood years growing up —- this is the problem. This is the absence of parental love that is the problem. It is this heinous form of child abuse that is the problem - supported and promoted by - the negligence of the complete absence of the science on homosexuality in the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding homosexuality. It kills human bonding that develops human EMPATHY!!! It kills LOVE!!! It promotes hatred - a never ending hatred - gives license - to be as mean as you can be - for as long as you want!!! All because this child was not loved!!! It is the never ending story of child abuse -- the mutilation of a child's spirit!!!

I received your letter dated October 2015, that included a request to set an appointment to dialogue with you. At the time, my commitments,obligations and lack of financial means did not permit me to follow through. Furthermore, the around trip from Canton, MI to Grand Rapids, MI would have been about eight hours. However, after seeking reliable spiritual direction I was advised to write a letter to accept your request to meet. In the process of writing this letter, I began to thoroughly research the situation, from the combined insight obtained from three professionals perspectives, as a priest, as a psychologist, and as a historian. Through these perspectives, I have analyzed the many ways in which I was a victim of antigay hierarchal violence, having no judicial oversight to appeal to for protection within the church or civilly. This is an unidentified form of structural violence directed not at me alone but also many priests, theologians, sisters, religious and others, including Pope Francis for the past four decades - all have been victims of this form of violence.

S t r u c t u r a l V i o l e n c e

Introduction

by Deborah Du Nann Winter and Dana C. Leighton

Peace, conflict, and violence: Peace psychology in the 21st century

…Direct violence is horrific, but its brutality usually gets our attention: we notice it, and often respond to it. Structural violence, however, is almost always invisible, embedded in ubiquitous social structures, normalized by stable institutions and regular experience. Structural violence occurs whenever people are disadvantaged by political, legal, economic, or cultural traditions. Because they are longstanding, structural inequities usually seem ordinary—the way things are and always have been. But structural violence produces suffering and death as often as direct violence does, though the damage is slower, more subtle, more common, and more difficult to repair. The chapters in this section teach us about some important but invisible forms of structural violence, and alert us to the powerful cultural mechanisms that create and maintain them over generations…

One outcome of exclusionary thinking is the belief that victims of violence must in some way deserve their plight. But certainly it is easy to see that young children do not deserve to be victims…

The main purpose of this form of structural violence is to silence and remove anyone in the Church who openly discusses the science on the sexual orientation of homosexuality - gay people. This antigay hierarchical, structural violence has been successful in firmly suppressing this science on homosexuality for the past 60 years. In 1957, world renowned psychologist, Dr. Evelyn Hooker conducted ground breaking research proving that homosexuality is not a mental illness. She proved that being homosexual was just as normal as being heterosexual. For years the hierarchical church has rebuked such scientifically sound findings and have championed the obsessive suppression of gay people. Such actions lead to question who benefits from falsifying truth? The hierarchical church did not suppress the scientific research on heart surgery or cancer for the past 60 years. This vicious form of gay suppression is entrenched in the corruption of the curia in which speaking the truth has become a reprehensible thing. Through my years of analysis, I have come to find that the greatest harm this suppression imposes is on our children.

Truly I tell you, unless you

change and become like little children,

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this

child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

And whoever welcomes one such child in

my name welcomes me.

Matthew 18: 3-5

…whoever causes one of these

little ones

who believe in Me to stumble,

it would be better for him

to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck,

and to be drowned in the

depth of the sea.

Matthew 18:6

My “coming out” in March 1997 was all based on substantiated science and scripture. Furthermore, it was motivated to protect defenseless children. How did risking my life by coming out warrant such extreme vindictive retaliation for the past 20 years by members of the curia and hierarchy?

How did it get twisted around that I refused to return to the Grand Rapids Dioceses, when in fact, it was made clear to me that it was unsafe for me to return by their coercing me to acquiesce to being sent away to be re-educated on the science on the sexual orientation of homosexuality. They wanted me to leave the priesthood on my own, which would be another grave sin to commit. Since I had no recourse to appeal to for justice in 1997 - what recourse would I have available to me if I returned and more severe immoral tactics were used against me?

This tactic of the curia to dispose of someone was most recently demonstrated by Cardinal Raymond Burke firing Boeselager the Grand Chancellor of the Knights of Malta. Burke falsified a papal decision of Pope Francis that no one was to be fired, that the problematic issues with the Knights of Malta should be resolved through dialogue. Burke without any true dialogue with Boeselager stated that it was Pope Francis’s wish that he resign as the Grand Chancellor of the Knights of Malta. When Boeselager refused to resign because of “unreasonable circumstances,” Burke fired him on the grounds of disobedience. Sound familiar? Boeselager, then appealed directly to Pope Francis and an investigation was ordered into the firing of Boeselager. It was later exposed that the grounds that Burke had used against Boeselager were over “condoms.” However, this information was contrived by a group of Burke’s supporters known as “Lepanto Institute for the Restoration of All Things in Christ.” This group is described as a “militant traditionalist organization close to Burke (Austen Ivereigh).” “This ultraconservative organization specialized in the denunciation of "gays” entering the Church and in attacks on the major development associations that question unfettered economic liberalism (La Croix International).” On February 4, 2017, Pope Francis replaced Cardinal Burke as the Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and overnight all over Rome appeared posters of Pope Francis with a sad expression with the words - “Where is your mercy?”

It was the truth from science and religion that morally obligated me to come out for the protection of children growing up gay in March 1997. This was an act of love and my duty as a priest. It is the true meaning of being a priest. Pope Francis on Thursday, June 22, 2017 in his homily during Mass at Casa Santa Marta confirmed this fact stating,"The Good Shepherd gives his life for his sheep,” using as an example the parish priest of Barbiana, Fr. Don Milani, the from the Diocese of Firenze (Florence).

The research to find the answers to these questions endlessly kept unfolding more and more information that led back in time - more than a century and a half. The research doors were opened wide once Pope Francis was elected and he along with his team of experts, and cardinals began reforming the curia. The research revealed two main historical events that were dependent on exploiting societal prejudices against gay people to rise and to stay in power. The, first, began with the ideology of Nazism promoted by Hitler and the Nazi regime that led to the deaths of 70 million people unprecedented in human history. The, second, began the with ideology of the “trickle-down theory” known as Reaganomics that led to Globalization and the greatest inequality in human history - “A world where 1% of humanity controls as much wealth as the bottom 99% will never be stable (President Obama’s departing speech to the UN General Assembly September 2016).‟ Ian Kershaw explains what Hitler’s place in history will be:

…Primarily, as the inspiration of the most lethal and destructive war in history, and of the most terrible genocidethe world has ever seen. He left behind him not just physical, but also moral, ruination such as history has never previously experienced. He represented an extreme pathology of modern society. He showed us the most radical face of modern inhumanity – how an advanced society can undergo a breathtaking descent into modern barbarity that’s quite without precedent. That’s what, with the passage of time, we can see was historically defining about Hitler. Never before Hitler’s time had we seen so clearly what human beings are capable of…

…we shouldn’t mystify Hitler’s personality. The uniquenessof Nazism can’t be reduced to that strange personality. Another time, another place, and Hitler would have had no impact at all. He couldn’t have derailed a modern society without that society itself making a major contribution to its own fate… We shouldn’t be complacent about the future. New forms of fascism and racial intolerance rightly appal and worry us…

…what we can do is to remind ourselves of the essential point about Hitler: he represented the most fundamental and frontal assault ever launched on all that we associate with humanity and civilisation.

Excerpt from: - Hitler’s Place in History - Ian Kershaw

Professor of Modern History at Sheffield University

Lecture - Wednesday 27th April 2005

Over the past year and a half - I have been researching and writing 24/7, since I received your letter - gathering significant amounts of factual data on all three levels (as a priest, psychologist and historian). This research includes my personal experience of being a victim of the hierarchical, antigay violence. As it happens when I do research, such as it did when I was doing the qualitative research on the Holocaust in graduate school for psychology, it is only after thoroughly exhausting every possible avenue several times do all the pieces begin to fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle that a picture is formed.

The picture centers on the crucial importance for the safety and well-being of all of humanity present and on into the future and is dependent on maintaining an ongoing dialogue between science and religion. This is necessary to obtain truth that which then gives meaning and value to love. Without this truth formed through this process -

…Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted,to the point where it comes to mean the opposite…

Benedict XVI - Caritas in Veritate 2007 2009

Pope Benedict XVI goes on to make the warning that “Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development…” St. Pope John Paul II made an early statement to this effect explaining how science and religion cannot be separated. He explains - as Benedict does that science is the study of all of God’s creation and religion is formed from the bible, which is the inspired word of God. They both explain how the dialogue between science and religion becomes a self-correcting mechanism of oversight, preventing abuse and maintaining integrity of both science and religion - thus allowing science and religion to guide us on our journey into the future. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI are writing from their experience having lived through the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazi regime (1933-1945) that resulted from their manipulation and abuse of science and religion to invent a pseudo-science to legitimize Hitler’s ideology of Nazism and pseudo-religious terms to promote it. They experienced living in a social environment saturated in the racial ideology of Nazism - where the meaning of love was so twisted around that in actuality love meant the opposite. Love meant exterminating people considered to be less than human or subhuman - “Life Unworthy Of Life.”

With the recent election of President Trump we are experiencing living in a similar social environment saturated with the ideology of the “trickle-down theory.” This led to Globalization that was also legitimized by the manipulation of science and religion that twisted the meaning of love around to mean the exact opposite. In addition to Mr. Trump’s behavior, the Republican Convention 2016 slogans, “Lock her up!” (that sounded like the palpable hysteria of the Nazi Party “Sieg Heil” chant at a Cathedral lit Nuremberg Rally of the 1930s) and his being elected US president are all blatant examples of love twisted to mean the opposite. Both the rise of Nazism and Globalization were depended on the exploitation of societal prejudices against gay people.

However, in regards to rise of the “trickle-down theory”of the 1980s that led to Globalization - the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy are responsible for the exploitation of societal prejudices against gay people. The research of Dr. Evelyn Hooker and subsequent research completely dispel prejudices against gay people. Instead of the curia and hierarchy acknowledging the truth of this science - they manipulated religion by misusing the bible and continued to wrongly condemn homosexuality. Thus they twisted the meaning of truth around to the point that it continues to mean the opposite. They and their supporters are not about truth and therefore not about love. They are no different than the palpable hysteria of the Nazi Party “Sieg Heil” members at the Nuremberg Rallies of the 1930s. And this is the violence, their twisted meaning of truth - the complete absence of love, they have used against me and against so many others before and after me. Some of our best and brightest theologians and bridge makers, such as, Sister Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Robert Nugent. Gramick and Nugent have been responsible since 1977 for saving millions of people’s lives, especially very young children. To the best of my knowledge, they were the first to begin an ongoing dialogue on the science of the sexual orientation of homosexuality - gay people and religion - scripture and theology.

S c i e n c e can purify religion from error and superstition;

R e l i g i o n can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.

Each can draw the other into a wider world,

a world in which both can flourish.

For the truth of the matter is that the Church and the scientific

community will inevitably interact; their options

do not include isolation.

St. Pope John Paul II - 1988

I came out in March 1997: for the protection of children, as young as 4 and 5 years of age, who are growing up gay. Since then it has become a moral obligation to educate and prevent forced parental suppression and unsubstantiated antigay social and religious norms.What has bothered me ever since was the fact that I found it difficult to find the r o o t c a u s e in understanding “how” and “why” and “when” did the meaning of “love” and “truth” get so monumentally - twisted around; notably among the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy to mean the exact opposite.

For the past 10 years I have been writing in an effort to explain how this mindless inquisition that started almost immediately after coming out in June 1997 - of being coerced “behind closed doors” by a directive from the curia conveyed by the bishop for me to acquiesce to being sent away “somewhere” to be re-educated on the science on the sexual orientation of homosexuality. This directive was not only shocking, but traumatizing as well.

This irrational directive from the curia completely negated the immediate need of protecting the lives of millions of very young defenseless children from lifelong debilitating harmful effects. It also negated the wealth of the authoritative substantiated research gathered from the major medical and mental health associations, institutions, and organizations, including universities. This was the reason for my “coming out.”

Through knowledge acquired during my studies at the University of Michigan and attending the American Psychological AssociationNational Conventions my research was reinforced on the science of sexual orientation. The action of the curia and hierarchy was a blatant affront, a direct attack on truth and love, as taught and embodied in Jesus Christ, of which the entire purpose and meaning of priesthood is based on. It was like a supervisor telling a heart surgeon that he is going to be be sent away on a sabbatical to be reeducated on the ancient system of medicine known as “bloodletting.” I cannot explain how twisted it sounded - to be told such absurdity!!! “Who in the hell is running this ship?!?” I was 47 years old at the time.

How did the curia and hierarchy cause a breach in the dialogue between science and religion that ended up twisting the meaning of love around to mean the opposite?

We will learn from studying the - science on sexual orientation that it is composed of interrelated biological and psychological processes that are not able to be consciously controlled or suppressed. These interrelated processes function outside our conscious awareness - automatically and continuously throughout life as part of the autonomic nervous system - like the heart beating and breathing. The continuous functioning of our sexual orientation - is essential in meeting our most basic human need for love, attachment, intimacy, through which empathy is developed. The continuous functioning of our sexual orientation is as vital to human survival from the beginning of life to the end - as the heart beating and breathing. Any attempt to force the suppression of a child’s gay sexual orientation is the same as suppressing the heart and breathing rate which can cause a number of lifelong adverse effects (persistent form of depression (dysthymia), suicidal ideation, and obsessive dislike for gay people that is implicit, to explicit verbal expressions of hate, to lethal forms of violence, and torture).

The majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy are European. They are the ones who grew up in the toxic antigay social environments left behind by Hitler’s Nazi regime. This begins to explain the long history of the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy’s collective obsessive antigay crusade. This collective thought suppressed all emerging science on homosexuality for the past 60 years. For these members of the curia and hierarchy the thought of gay science has been a long closed door slammed shut in their early childhood years. This was out of great fear from their witnessing the terror in the adult’s warnings of how Hitler treated priests who were found out to be homosexuals. As this trauma of the early childhood events are not remembered, only the emotional terror of the event remains. It is this emotional terror that is wronglymistaken as an innate guiding voice of their conscience strongly conveying to them that homosexuality is evil. This misunderstanding then becomes a force that completely obliterates years of scientific research on homosexuality. It is more likely that such scientific research ignites seemingly unending waves of unexplainable terror. That door slammed tightly shut - is the breach in the dialogue between science and religion on the issue of homosexuality. This is a childhood defense mechanism. It is the only means available to the child to stop the unending waves of fear. However, as adults, these childhood defenses must be reexamined in a safe environment - to be challenged in the adult dialogue between science and religion on issues of homosexuality. As Pope Benedict XVI explains, this is the only process to find truth and give real value and meaning to the understanding of love. I do not presume this to be an easy task to unravel and should only be attempted in a safe environment. However, this situation - is not unusual - it brings to mind the words of St. Paul to be understood with great care and empathy.

When I was a child, I talked like a child,

I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.

When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

1 Corinthians 13:11

No, no, no this type of breach in the dialogue between science and religion on gay sexual orientation has to stop! Justice demands that I be exonerated and proper restitution be made for all harm endured, including the lost salary for the past 20 years to be made quickly. Not to follow through on this road of true justice is to continue this breach in the dialogue between science and religion on gay sexual orientation. Am I, like so many others, going to be made an example of what happens when a priest speaks aloud the truth? Will this be a situation reminiscent of Hitler’s regime to remove and silence Anti-Nazi priests? Are you going demonstrate publicly how an advanced society of people made a major contribution to the modern barbarity of Hitler and the Nazi regime by their complicity and indifference?

My moral obligation as a priest is to protect people, especially children.

I look forward to setting a time to dialogue the reality of this situation in the light of the warnings of both St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI while maintaining an open discussion between science and religion for the search of truth that leads to love.

Sincerely yours,

Fr. Marty Kurylowicz

Cc. Pope Francis

PS. For more information on the:

Science of Homosexual Sexual Orientation

Gay Adult Porn & Homophobia - Who views it the most and why?

Vatican’s Swiss Guards Break Up a D r u g - F u e l e d G a y O r g y

at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - July 2017

“Priests In Panties” 2010

Who is the blame for all the gay closeted sexual acting-out scandals at the Vatican?

QUACKS: 'Conversion Therapists,' the Anti-LGBT Right, and the Demonization of Homosexuality

May 25, 2016

This is a report about junk science and some of the people who propagate it. It is not about silly, perhaps amusing theories about ESP or life on the moon or even purported miracle cures for cancer. The “science” examined here actively harms people, leading with grim regularity to suicide, depression and an array of self-destructive behaviors. It demeans, defames and defrauds human beings, typically at their most vulnerable moments. And, as if that weren’t enough, it regularly lays the blame for the alleged malady of homosexuality at the feet of gay people’s parents, despite the fact that they are wholly innocent.

Executive Summary

Will standing in a circle of naked men deep in the woods turn gay men straight? Is disrobing in front of a mirror alone with your therapist and then touching “your masculinity” a cure for homosexuality? Does beating a pillow representing your mother really help develop “healthy” relationships with other men?

The men and women who people this industry known as “conversion,” “reparative” or “ex-gay” therapists are like modern-day phrenologists, the “experts” beloved by the Nazis who thought they could identify inferior human beings by measuring their subjects’ skulls. They employ theories that have been thoroughly debunked by virtually all relevant medical associations. They cite bizarre studies that were shot down decades ago as key documents. They use techniques that were described in court by one expert as “worse than snake oil.” They are quacks.

Many of them are doubtless sincere. Some describe their own struggles with “unwanted same-sex attractions.” But sincere or not, the promotion of conversion therapy has a cynical side. If being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender is merely a chosen behavior, one that can be “fixed” with the right mental health treatment, then criticizing LGBT people for their sexual choices is akin to simply criticizing bad behavior. Unlike attacking someone for their skin color, reparative therapists can condemn the gay “lifestyle” and still claim that they are not LGBT-hating bigots.

The real science is perfectly clear. A consensus of the vast majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other counselors and their professional organizations agree that homosexuality is a normal variation of human sexuality. Likewise, they condemnreparative therapy and other attempts to change sexual orientation…

Many of these facilities - which exist not only in Ecuador, but elsewhere in South America, Europe, and beyond - continue to operate under the guise that they treat drug and alcohol addicts, when in reality they serve a much more horrifying purpose…

The IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) report, and other reports from the region, show that violence against LGBT individuals is becoming more extreme. They are often stoned, tortured and raped before they are killed, and crimes often go unpunished.

Violence despite progressive LGBT protection laws

The perplexing narrative about being gay in Latin America

March 3, 2017

(CNN)On a February night in 2008, Luis Alberto Rojas Marin says, his life changed forever.

At 26 years old, the Peruvian gay man was arrested by police officers while heading home shortly after midnight. Throughout the six hours he was in police custody, he says, he was stripped, raped with a baton and verbally abused by police officers before being let go.

All of this, he says, because of his sexuality.

Peruvian authorities investigated the incident and reported that Marin was taken into custody after neighbors reported unfamiliar people in the vicinity of the highway. The authorities also told the Organization of American States (OAS), which has been looking into the allegations, that they conducted an extensive investigation and found no indication the acts described by Marin had occurred.

In the nine years since, Marin has complained, but few have listened. After multiple failed attempts to have his case heard in Peru, Marin took it to the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which monitors and protects human rights in the Americas. The commission heard his case December 1…

Marin says he hopes to have an answer soon -- it's not clear when the commission will issue its ruling -- but mostly he wants justice for anyone else that may have been raped or tortured because of their sexuality.

"I would have liked to be able to turn the page on this, and to put this behind me. But I am putting my face out there for everyone (who has been a victim)," he says. "I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing this because I am a human being who pleads for and begs for justice for all the people who have been victims and anyone that might have died."

His case is not isolated. Nearly 600 people died across Latin America from anti-LGBT violence between January 2013 and March 2014, according to a 2015 report by the IACHR.

The IACHR report, and other reports from the region, show that violence against LGBT individuals is becoming more extreme. They are often stoned, tortured and raped before they are killed, and crimes often go unpunished.

Many times, crimes against the LGBT population go underreported because of fear of reprisals and skepticism of the justice system.

Violence despite progressive LGBT protection laws

Latin America offers a contradictory narrative: The region has the highest rates of violence against the LGBT community, according to research done by Transgender Europe, a non-governmental organization, but it also has some of the most progressive laws for LGBT equality and protection…

The hierarchy and Pope Francis - vividly validated the reasoning for the immediacy - why I came out in March 1997, as pastor of Holy Family Parish, Sparta, Michigan - for the protection of gay children, as young as 4 and 5 years of age - from the lifelong harmful effects growing up gay or bisexual - during early childhood caused by the influence of anti-gaysocial and religious norms. These lifelong harmful effects can be clearly observed in the curia and hierarchyfierce homophobic behavior - their inability to form life-long meaningful and fulfilling relationships, including their inability to connect with others, their lack of empathy for others, their over concerns about outward appearance, status and careers, as noted in Pope Francis "Christmas address to the curia", December 22, 2014. It is not only their complete absence of maintaining any ongoing dialogue between science and religion on the topic homosexual sexual orientation for the past 60 years, which is directly against the words of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI , it is also by their immediate emotional explosive outbursts to the 2014 midterm report of Synod session on Family - that listed notes of the open discussion that took place - discussing ways of how to be pastorally more welcoming to gay people and their families, including ways of valuing long term committed gay relationships. There was a lot of emotional outbursts among the curia and hierarchy, however, there is absolutely -no detail reasoning to substantiate their extraordinary hostile and aggressive reactions to the report. So intense was their fierce emotional reaction that the continuation of this open discussion on gay people scheduled for the second synod on Family session 2015 had to be canceled.

Sadly, one cannot, also, help to notice the enormous amount of the emotional psychic energy that is use by the curia and the hierarchy completely absorbed in an anti-gay obsession and the enormous amount of Pope Francis emotional psychic energy is used in reaching out to all people globally in nearly every situation in extraordinary effort to be inclusive of everyone, particularly those most forgotten and are in need of our help. Pope Francis has been relentless in this regard since his election to the papacy in March 2013.

NEWARK — The word “pilgrimage” usually evokes visions of far-off, exotic places, but for some 100 gay and lesbian Catholics and their families, a pilgrimage to the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart here on a recent Sunday was more like a homecoming.

The doors to the cathedral were opened to them, and they were welcomed personally by the leader of the Archdiocese of Newark, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin. They were seated on folding chairs at the cathedral’s center, in front of the altar in the towering sanctuary, under the blue-tinted glow of stained glass.

“I am Joseph, your brother,” Cardinal Tobin told the group, which included lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics from around New York and the five dioceses in New Jersey. “I am your brother, as a disciple of Jesus. I am your brother, as a sinner who finds mercy with the Lord.”

The welcoming of a group of openly gay people to Mass by a leader of Cardinal Tobin’s standing in the Roman Catholic Church in this country would have been unthinkable even five years ago. But Cardinal Tobin, whom Pope Francis appointed to Newark last year, is among a small but growing group of bishops changing how the American church relates to its gay members. They are seeking to be more inclusive and signaling to subordinate priests that they should do the same…

Four years ago, Pope Francis shook the Catholic world with his comment about gay priests seeking the Lord: “Who am I to judge?” But it was unclear how his words would affect Catholics seeking acceptance in the pews…

But gestures like Cardinal Tobin’s are evidence that Pope Francis’ words are having an impact…

in which she administered several psychological tests to groups of self-identified male homosexuals and heterosexuals and asked experts to identify the homosexuals and rate their mental health. The experiment, which other researchers subsequently repeated, argues that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, as there was no detectable difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of mental adjustment...Photo

Evelyn Hooker's pioneering research debunked the popular myth that homosexuals are inherently less mentally healthy than heterosexuals, leading to significant changes in how psychology views and treats people who are gay...

Hooker's work was the first to empirically test the assumption that gay men were mentally unhealthy and maladjusted. The fact that no differences were found between gay and straight participants sparked more research in this area and began to dismantle the myth that homosexual men and women are inherently unhealthy.

In conjunction with other empirical results, this work led the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the DSM in 1973 (it had been listed as a sociopathic personality disorder). In 1975, the American Psychological Association publicly supported this move, stating that "homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, reliability or general social and vocational capabilities…(and mental health professionals should) take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness long associated with homosexual orientation." Although prejudice and stigma still exist in society, this research has helped millions of gay men and women gain acceptance in the mental health community.

Ian Kershaw “is regarded by many as one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw).” Kershaw describes in great detail - the horrific atrocities instigated by Hitler and how we should see his place in history. Kershaw looks upon Hitler’s place in history as:

Primarily, as the inspiration of the mostlethal and destructive war in history, and of the most terrible genocide the world has ever seen. He left behind him not just physical, but also moral, ruination such as history has never previously experienced. He represented an extremepathology of modern society. He showed us the most radical face of moderninhumanity – how an advanced society can undergo a breathtaking descent into modern barbarity that’s quite without precedent…

A child’s sexual orientation is not about sexual behavior - it is about love, wanting to feel one with another. Depending on the severity of this rejection of a child’s expression of love - the child wants to desperately please his parents and will learn to hid from his parent such emotions of love that are disturbing to them. He will even hide them from himself and thus begins the mental dissociation of this child - attempting to suppress the never ending - regular functioning of his sexual orientation of the emotional impulses - to be loved and to love and to feel one with another. However, as explained above - a person’s sexual orientation like the heart beating, breathing, sexual arousal, etc., are all under the control autonomic nervous system that operates automatically and unconsciously - they cannot be suppressed.

A research study 2012, at Cornell University found that measurements of pupil dilation taken while study participants viewed erotic videos of people they found attractive - was a robust indicator of - a person’s sexual orientation and of the activation of the autonomic nervous system. The results of bisexual men was of significant importance in this new study that revealed they had substantial pupil dilations to sexual videos of both men and women.

The Eyes Have It: Sex and Sexual Orientation Differences in Pupil Dilation Patterns

August 3. 2012

…pupil dilation to stimuli indicates activation of the autonomic nervous system. This system is associated with many automatic processes such as perspiration, digestion, blood pressure, and heart rate. For this reason, pupil dilation has been used as indicator of automatic response, for example, in studies of implicit reaction and cognitive load. Other research suggests that pupil dilation can reflect automatic attention, or attention that is likely not in the conscious control of participants. It is therefore unlikely that participantssuppresspupil dilation to stimuli they are sexually attracted to. Pupil dilation patterns could therefore reflect, with high sensitivity, automatic attention related to sexual attraction and sexual orientation…

I have been so saddened by Pope Benedict XVI's cruel words toLGBTQpeople around the world, to their parents, families and friends, most ESPECIALLY TO CHILDREN. After reading the accounts of this human travesty, I did not know where to find comfort or hope. And then I thought about your blog. And just like receiving a wonderful Christmas present, sure enough I found the hope and comfort I needed to hear. Photo

I am a priest and a clinical psychologist (MS). And for one of my research projects I chose to do a qualitative research project of the recorded verbal accounts of survivors of the Holocaust, 50 years after the event. It was a difficult research project, because I could not make sense of one of the accounts of the survivors.

For example, one survivor was describing what it was like riding the train to AUSCHWITZ, but he was describing how he was trying to make conversation with a girl on the train. I listened and wrote out this one account almost 30 times but I just was not getting it. I could not understand how this man could be talking about wanting to make conversation with this girl on the same train toAUSCHWITZ!?!

Because I had taught high school religion classes for nearly 20 years, it hit me hard, like a flash of lightning. Instantly, all the pieces came together, so fast. Though this survivor was in his late 60’s when he gave his account of his story on audiotape, he was remembering the events that took place, but naturally they were recounted through the mind of a teenager, the age he was on the train to AUSCHWITZ. That is why the dialogue wasn’t making any sense. I was thinking of him as an old man because the voice on the audiotape was the voice of a 68-year-old. As shocking as a bomb going off, all the different aspects of the psychological developmental stages of a teenager kicked in. I realized only too fully that he was just a young normal teenager on that train!!! And so was the girl he was trying to make conversation, and their moms and dads were there with them!!! There was no way to pretend I did not realize what I discovered. It kept hitting me: this is not some script from a movie or TV miniseries on the Holocaust. No; as much as I wished it were. The reality of this horror hit me all at once, on so many different levels of consciousness: what an unbelievable horror it was!!! How could we treat human beings like this! I remember when the realization of the magnitude of this horror first hit me, like an instant reflex. I threw down the transcript I was holding as if it were a blazing hot poker. It kept hitting me over and over again that this is not a movie script or some kind of play – this really happened! It really happened! Oh, my God, how could this have happened!?!!!

My supervisor told me at the time that I was traumatized by the oral content. Qualitative research is an attempt to understand the complexity of emotions, the kinds of emotions, and the degree of intensity involved. Our emotions are what allow us to connect with other human beings. We identify with the non-verbal quality of emotions more immediately and strongly than with the words used to express them. The non-verbal qualities include tone of voice, eye contact, facial expression, body posture, and gestures, all of which express emotions. Emotions are why we can connect with people through time, across cultures, and individually. It is the expression of human emotions in the arts that makes some works of art timeless, because they continually speak to all people through the ages.

And when I heard what Pope Benedict XVI said about homosexuals and transgendered human beings at Christmas 2008, I felt that same trauma all over again. Because in some way, somehow, he was conveying in a non-verbal manner the horror of the Holocaust, in what appears to be a traumatized, trance-like, accepted social norm from that period of time dictating that some people just don’t count, aren’t important, and can be easily disposed of. And if you rock the boat, you could be next to be disposed of.

I truly have to believe that a person in his position would not be doing this consciously or intentionally. The horror of the Holocaust is like an atomic bomb with fallout so extensive that it spreads over a radius of more than 150 miles. The horror of the Holocaust began in 1933 and ended in 1945. The psychological fallout would have been far more extensive and more deadly, especially when it isnotidentified as such.

It hit me the way it did when I realized that the research I was doing about a Holocaust survivor, a man 68 years old telling his story, who was remembering what it was like to be on the train to AUSCHWITZ, from the perspective of a young teenage boy who just wanted to talk to a girl. It seemed like the same kind of horror, a tacit assumption that some people don't count and can be disposed of without remorse. Could it be that Benedict XVI is unconsciously repeating Hitler's crime against humanity by taking on a long-accepted social attitude from that period of time?

What would be the severity of the psychological effects on a boy who grew up to be gay in Germany during the time of Hitler’s NAZI PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS 1933 -1945? During the Nazi regime, homosexuals were publicly defamed and falsely accused for the major social problems of that time, which was done to incite massive public hatred and hostility directed against homosexuals. Homosexuals were used for medical experiments, physically mutilated, brutally tortured and exterminated.

Would this child, as an adult, in a severe dissociated state of mind from his own homosexual feelings (Harry Stack Sullivan MD, Dissociative Processes, Clinical Studies on Psychiatry (1956)), unconsciously perpetuate the terrifying horror of the insensitivity he had experienced growing up? If he found himself in a position of authority would he recreate the same social and political environment of violence and terror for homosexuals that he experienced, as a child who grew up to be gay, during the NAZI PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS?

I think in truth on a much deeper level I was frightened, really frightened, to hearPope Benedict XVI’s Christmas remarks against homosexuals and transgendered human beings and even more frightened by the silence from the larger global community of human beings. What is so frightening is, even if there is agreement that one person does not matter or is not important, in truth then no one matters. Therefore, when I thought about your blog and what you did on October 5, 2008, I felt more reassured, I felt hope, and I felt comforted. NOW, isn’t that the true meaning of Christmas?

“Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.”Erik EriksonKids Are Being Hurt!!!